ABSTRACT
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13.1 Introduction The notion of parking functions was introduced by Konheim and Weiss [53] as a colorful way to describe their work on computer storage. The parking problem can be stated as follows. There are n cars C1, . . . ,Cn that want to park on a one-way street with ordered parking spaces 0,1, . . . ,n−1. Each car Ci has a preferred space ai. The cars enter the street one at a time in the order C1,C2, . . . ,Cn. A car tries to park in its preferred space. If that space is occupied, then it parks in the next available space. If there is no space then the car leaves the street. The sequence (a1, . . . ,an) is called a parking function of length n if all the cars can park, i.e., no car leaves the street.
