Existence of T*(3, 4,v)‐codes

A word of length k over an alphabet Q of size v is a vector of length k with coordinates taken from Q. Let Q^*₄ be the set of all words of length 4 over Q. A T^*(3, 4, v)‐code over Q is a subset C^*? Q^*₄ such that every word of length 3 over Q occurs as a subword in exactly one word of C^*. Levenshtein has proved that a T^*(3, 4, vv)‐code exists for all even v. In this paper, the notion of a generalized candelabra t‐system is introduced and used to show that a T^*(3, 4, v)‐code exists for all odd v. Combining this with Levenshtein's result, the existence problem for a T^*(3,4, v)‐code is solved completely. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Combin Designs 13: 42–53, 2005.