Near MDS codes of non-elliptic-curve type from Reed-Solomon codes (Q6098081)

An \([n,k,d]\)-linear code attaining the Singleton bound (so \(d=n-k+1\)) is called MDS (maximum distance separable). The dual codes of MDS codes are also MDS. A linear code with minimum distance \(d=n-k\) is called almost MDS (AMDS). In general the dual code of an AMDS code is not AMDS, but when both the code and its dual are indeed AMDS then the code is called \textit{near MDS} (NMDS). There are many constructions of NMDS codes arising from elliptic curves, but the authors in this paper are concerned with cases which cannot be obtained in that way. In particular, the authors here construct a family of \([q+3,4,q-1]\) \(q\)-ary NMDS codes for any \(q\) with \(\gcd(3,q-1)=1\) and of \([2^m+3,5,2^m-2]\) \(2^m\)-ary NMDS codes by suitably lengthening Reed-Solomon codes and provide their full weight distribution. They also determine the locality of their codes and show that (except for \(p=2\) and dimension \(4\) they are both distance-optimal and dimension-optimal locally recoverable codes. They also conjecture that the codes they constructed (for \(q\) large enough) cannot be further extended.