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Comment from Lara Pudwell (Lara.Pudwell(AT)valpo.edu), Oct 23 2008 (Start):
A permutation p avoids a pattern q if it has no subsequence that is order-isomorphic to q. For example, p avoids the pattern 132 if it has no subsequence abc with a<c<b.
Barred pattern avoidance considers permutations that avoid a pattern except in a special case. Given a barred pattern q, we may form two patterns, q1 = the sequence of unbarred letters of q and q2 = the sequence of all letters of q.
A permutation p avoids barred pattern q if every instance of q1 in p is embedded in a copy of q2 in p. In other words, p avoids q1, except in the special case that a copy of q1 is a subsequence of a copy of q2.
For example, if q=5{bar 1}32{bar 4}, then q1=532 and q2 = 51324. p avoids q if every for decreasing subsequence acd of length 3 in p, one can find letters b and e so that the subsequence abcde of p has b<d<c<e<a. (End)
The bar refers to a missing piece. In other words to say that a permutation has the pattern 21{bar 3}54 means that it has a 2154 (or equivalently a 2143) pattern but that there is no entry in the permutation so that we can extend this 2154 to a 21543 pattern.
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