Title: The sequence of open and closed prefixes of a Sturmian word,
Abstract: A finite word is closed if it contains a factor that occurs both as a prefix
and as a suffix but does not have internal occurrences, otherwise it is open.
We are interested in the {\it oc-sequence} of a word, which is the binary
sequence whose $n$-th element is $0$ if the prefix of length $n$ of the word is
open, or $1$ if it is closed. We exhibit results showing that this sequence is
deeply related to the combinatorial and periodic structure of a word. In the
case of Sturmian words, we show that these are uniquely determined (up to
renaming letters) by their oc-sequence. Moreover, we prove that the class of
finite Sturmian words is a maximal element with this property in the class of
binary factorial languages. We then discuss several aspects of Sturmian words
that can be expressed through this sequence. Finally, we provide a linear-time
algorithm that computes the oc-sequence of a finite word, and a linear-time
algorithm that reconstructs a finite Sturmian word from its oc-sequence.