Termination in Grammatical Evolution: Grammar Design, Wrapping, and Tails

This paper explores the issues with mapping termination in Grammatical Evolution, and examines approaches that can be used to minimise them. It analyses the traditional approach of reusing the same genetic material, known as wrapping, and shows why this is inefficient with some grammars used in the literature. It suggests the appending of non-coding genetic material to genotype strings, at the start of the run, and shows the benefits of this approach: higher probability of creating terminated individuals, better or similar experimental performance, and a tendency to generate smaller solutions, when compared to the use of wrapping.