Population signature
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The population signature or population hash of an oscillator consists of generation-by-generation population counts separated by hyphens, sequenced so that the lowest number appears to the left. The first count may have leading zeros to facilitate sorting among oscillators of various sizes.
Population signatures are especially useful in breaking ties when sorting oscillators of the same or nearly the same size.
| Octagon 2 (p5) has population signature 16-24-16-24-24 (click above to open LifeViewer) RLE: here Plaintext: here |
For more examples, see smallest period 5 oscillators.
Population sequences for initial ticks of evolutionary sequences are sometimes used in search scripts, e.g. popseq,[note 1] though their lack of uniqueness can cause false positives due to hash collisions.