Fast Searching in Packed Strings

Given strings $P$ and $Q$ the (exact) string matching problem is to find all positions of substrings in $Q$ matching $P$. The classical Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm [SIAM J. Comput., 1977] solves the string matching problem in linear time which is optimal if we can only read one character at the time. However, most strings are stored in a computer in a packed representation with several characters in a single word, giving us the opportunity to read multiple characters simultaneously. In this paper we study the worst-case complexity of string matching on strings given in packed representation. Let $m \leq n$ be the lengths $P$ and $Q$, respectively, and let $\sigma$ denote the size of the alphabet. On a standard unit-cost word-RAM with logarithmic word size we present an algorithm using time O\left(\frac{n}{\log_\sigma n} + m + \occ\right). Here \occ is the number of occurrences of $P$ in $Q$. For $m = o(n)$ this improves the $O(n)$ bound of the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm. Furthermore, if $m = O(n/\log_\sigma n)$ our algorithm is optimal since any algorithm must spend at least \Omega(\frac{(n+m)\log \sigma}{\log n} + \occ) = \Omega(\frac{n}{\log_\sigma n} + \occ) time to read the input and report all occurrences. The result is obtained by a novel automaton construction based on the Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm combined with a new compact representation of subautomata allowing an optimal tabulation-based simulation.Comment: To appear in Journal of Discrete Algorithms. Special Issue on CPM 200

On the bit-parallel simulation of the nondeterministic Aho-Corasick and suffix automata for a set of patterns

In this paper we present a method to simulate, using the bit-parallelism technique, the nondeterministic Aho-Corasick automaton and the nondeterministic suffix automaton induced by the trie and by the Directed Acyclic Word Graph for a set of patterns, respectively. When the prefix redundancy is nonnegligible, this method yields-if compared to the original bit-parallel encoding with no prefix factorization-a representation that requires smaller bit-vectors and, correspondingly, less words. In particular, if we restrict to single-word bit-vectors, more patterns can be packed into a word. We also present two simple algorithms, based on such a technique, for searching a set P of patterns in a text T of length n over an alphabet @S of size @s. Our algorithms, named Log-And and Backward-Log-And, require O(([email protected])@?m/[email protected]?)-space, and work in O([email protected]?m/[email protected]?) and O([email protected]?m/[email protected]?l"m"i"n) worst-case searching time, respectively, where w is the number of bits in a computer word, m is the number of states of the automaton, and l"m"i"n is the length of the shortest pattern in P

DC: a highly efficient and flexible exact pattern-matching algorithm

ware of the need for faster and flexible searching algorithms in fields such as web searching or bioinformatics, we propose DC - a high-performance algorithm for exact pattern matching. Emphasizing the analysis of pattern peculiarities in the pre-processing phase, the algorithm en- compasses a novel search logic based on the examination of multiple alignments within a larger window, selectively tested after a powerful heuristic called compatibility rule is verified. The new algorithm’s performance is, on average, above its best-rated competitors when testing different data types and using a complete suite of pattern extensions and compositions. The flexibility is remarkable and the efficiency is more relevant in quaternary or greater alphabets. Keywords: exact pattern-match, searching algorithms

Efficient exact pattern-matching in proteomic sequences

This paper proposes a novel algorithm for complete exact pattern-matching focusing the specificities of protein sequences (alphabet of 20 symbols) but, also highly efficient considering larger alphabets. The searching strategy uses large search windows allowing multiple alignments per iteration. A new filtering heuristic, named compatibility rule, contributed decisively to the efficiency improvement. The new algorithm’s performance is, on average, superior in comparison with its best-rated competitors

Revisiting Multiple Pattern Matching

We consider the classical exact multiple string matching problem. The proposed solution is based on a combination of a few ideas: using q-grams instead of single characters, pattern superimposition, bit-parallelism and alphabet size reduction. We discuss the pros and cons of various alternatives to achieve the possibly best combination of techniques. The main contribution of this paper are different alphabet mapping methods that allow to reduce memory requirements and use larger q-grams. The experimental results show that the presented algorithm is competitive in most practical cases. One of the tests shows also that tailoring our scheme to search over a byte-encoded text results in speedups in comparison to searching over a plain text

A Survey of String Matching Algorithms

ABSTRACT The concept of string matching algorithms are playing an important role of string algorithms in finding a place where one or several strings (patterns) are found in a large body of text (e.g., data streaming, a sentence, a paragraph, a book, etc.). Its application covers a wide range, including intrusion detection Systems (IDS) in computer networks, applications in bioinformatics, detecting plagiarism, information security, pattern recognition, document matching and text mining. In this paper we present a short survey for well-known and recent updated and hybrid string matching algorithms. These algorithms can be divided into two major categories, known as exact string matching and approximate string matching. The string matching classification criteria was selected to highlight important features of matching strategies, in order to identify challenges and vulnerabilities