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

Optimal Packed String Matching

In the packed string matching problem, each machine word accommodates α characters, thus an n-character text occupies n/α memory words. We extend the Crochemore-Perrin constantspace O(n)-time string matching algorithm to run in optimal O(n/α) time and even in real-time, achieving a factor α speedup over traditional algorithms that examine each character individually. Our solution can be efficiently implemented, unlike prior theoretical packed string matching work. We adapt the standard RAM model and only use its AC 0 instructions (i.e., no multiplication) plus two specialized AC 0 packed string instructions. The main string-matching instruction is available in commodity processors (i.e., Intel’s SSE4.2 and AVX Advanced String Operations); the other maximal-suffix instruction is only required during pattern preprocessing. In the absence of these two specialized instructions, we propose theoretically-efficient emulation using integer multiplication (not AC 0) and table lookup

Towards optimal packed string matching

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t Dedicated to Professor Gad M. Landau, on the occasion of his 60th birthday Keywords: String matching Word-RAM Packed strings In the packed string matching problem, it is assumed that each machine word can accommodate up to α characters, thus an n-character string occupies n/α memory words. The main word-size string-matching instruction wssm is available in contemporary commodity processors. The other word-size maximum-suffix instruction wslm is only required during the pattern pre-processing. Benchmarks show that our solution can be efficiently implemented, unlike some prior theoretical packed string matching work. (b) We also consider the complexity of the packed string matching problem in the classical word-RAM model in the absence of the specialized micro-level instructions wssm and wslm. We propose micro-level algorithms for the theoretically efficient emulation using parallel algorithms techniques to emulate wssm and using the Four-Russians technique to emulate wslm. Surprisingly, our bit-parallel emulation of wssm also leads to a new simplified parallel random access machine string-matching algorithm. As a byproduct to facilitate our results we develop a new algorithm for finding the leftmost (most significant) 1 bits in consecutive non-overlapping blocks of uniform size inside a word. This latter problem is not known to be reducible to finding the rightmost 1, which can be easily solved, since we do not know how to reverse the bits of a word in O (1) time

Thread divergence free and space efficient GPU implementation of NFA AC

Multipattern String Matching problem reports all occurrences of a given set or dictionary of patterns in a document. Multipattern string matching problems are used in databases, data mining, DNA and protein sequence analysis, Intrusion detection systems (IDS) for applications (APIDS), networks (NIDS), protocols (PIDS), Host-based IDS, antivirus softwares, and machine learning problems. Parallel algorithm for multipattern string matching can be useful for above mentioned application because by using parallel platforms large number of threads can be executed parallelly and these thread can search for patterns in parallel. One of the multipattern search algorithm is a Aho- Corasick (AC) is a multipattern search algorithm. AC algorithm has two versions : NFA AC and DFA AC. DFA AC and NFA AC have matching automata to perform multipattern searching. NFA AC automata takes less memory then DFA AC automata. Many parallel implementations for AC algorithm are available

Faster algorithms for longest common substring

In the classic longest common substring (LCS) problem, we are given two strings S and T, each of length at most n, over an alphabet of size σ, and we are asked to find a longest string occurring as a fragment of both S and T. Weiner, in his seminal paper that introduced the suffix tree, presented an (n log σ)-time algorithm for this problem [SWAT 1973]. For polynomially-bounded integer alphabets, the linear-time construction of suffix trees by Farach yielded an (n)-time algorithm for the LCS problem [FOCS 1997]. However, for small alphabets, this is not necessarily optimal for the LCS problem in the word RAM model of computation, in which the strings can be stored in (n log σ/log n) space and read in (n log σ/log n) time. We show that, in this model, we can compute an LCS in time (n log σ / √{log n}), which is sublinear in n if σ = 2^{o(√{log n})} (in particular, if σ = (1)), using optimal space (n log σ/log n). We then lift our ideas to the problem of computing a k-mismatch LCS, which has received considerable attention in recent years. In this problem, the aim is to compute a longest substring of S that occurs in T with at most k mismatches. Flouri et al. showed how to compute a 1-mismatch LCS in (n log n) time [IPL 2015]. Thankachan et al. extended this result to computing a k-mismatch LCS in (n log^k n) time for k = (1) [J. Comput. Biol. 2016]. We show an (n log^{k-1/2} n)-time algorithm, for any constant integer k > 0 and irrespective of the alphabet size, using (n) space as the previous approaches. We thus notably break through the well-known n log^k n barrier, which stems from a recursive heavy-path decomposition technique that was first introduced in the seminal paper of Cole et al. [STOC 2004] for string indexing with k errors. </p