  Generalized Zeckendorf decompositions are expansions of integers as sums of
elements of solutions to recurrence relations. The simplest cases are base-$b$
expansions, and the standard Zeckendorf decomposition uses the Fibonacci
sequence. The expansions are finite sequences of nonnegative integer
coefficients (satisfying certain technical conditions to guarantee uniqueness
of the decomposition) and which can be viewed as analogs of sequences of
variable-length words made from some fixed alphabet. In this paper we present a
new approach and construction for uniform measures on expansions, identifying
them as the distribution of a Markov chain conditioned not to hit a set. This
gives a unified approach that allows us to easily recover results on the
expansions from analogous results for Markov chains, and in this paper we focus
on laws of large numbers, central limit theorems for sums of digits, and
statements on gaps (zeros) in expansions. We expect the approach to prove
useful in other similar contexts.
