Abstract. We translate the concept of succession rule and the ECO method into matrix notation, introducing the concept of a production matrix. This allows us to combine our method with other enumeration techniques using matrices, such as the method of Riordan matrices. Finally we treat the case of rational production matrices, i.e. those leading to rational generating functions.

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An occurrence of a consecutive permutation pattern p in a permutation π is a segment of consecutive letters of π whose values appear in the same order of size as the letters in p. The set of all permutations forms a poset with respect to such pattern containment. We compute the Möbius function of intervals in this poset, providing what may be called a complete solution to the problem. For most intervals our results give an immediate answer to the question. In the remaining cases, we give a polynomial time algorithm to compute the Möbius function. In particular, we show that the Möbius function only takes the values −1, 0 and 1.

The (classical) problem of characterizing and enumerating permutations that can be sorted using two stacks connected in series is still largely open. In the present paper we address a related problem, in which we impose restrictions both on the procedure and on the stacks. More precisely, we consider a greedy algorithm where we perform the rightmost legal operation (here "rightmost" refers to the usual representation of stack sorting problems). Moreover, the first stack is required to be σ-avoiding, for some permutation σ, meaning that, at each step, the elements maintained in the stack avoid the pattern σ when read from top to bottom. Since the set of permutations which can be sorted by such a device (which we call σ-machine) is not always a class, it would be interesting to understand when it happens. We will prove that the set of σ-machines whose associated sortable permutations are not a class is counted by Catalan numbers. Moreover, we will analyze two specific σ-machines in full details (namely when σ = 321 and σ = 123), providing for each of them a complete characterization and enumeration of sortable permutations. * G.C. and L.F. are members of the INdAM Research group GNCS; they are partially supported by INdAM -GNCS 2019 project "Studio di proprietá combinatoriche di linguaggi formali ispirate dalla biologia e da strutture bidimensionali" and by a grant of the "Fondazione della Cassa di Risparmio di Firenze" for the project "Rilevamento di pattern: applicazioni a memorizzazione basata sul DNA, evoluzione del genoma, scelta sociale".

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