Efficient string matching with wildcards and length constraints

This paper defines a challenging problem of pattern matching between a pattern P and a text T, with wildcards and length constraints, and designs an efficient algorithm to return each pattern occurrence in an online manner. In this pattern matching problem, the user can specify the constraints on the number of wildcards between each two consecutive letters of P and the constraints on the length of each matching substring in T. We design a complete algorithm, SAIL1 that returns each matching substring of P in T as soon as it appears in T in an O(n+ klmg) time with an O(lm) space overhead, where n is the length of T, k is the frequency of P's last letter occurring in T, l is the user-specified maximum length for each matching substring, m is the length of P, and g is the maximum difference between the user-specified maximum and minimum numbers of wildcards allowed between two consecutive letters in P. Keywords String matching

• Type: Journal
• Year: 2006
• Where: KAIS
• Authors: Gong Chen, Xindong Wu, Xingquan Zhu, Abdullah N. Arslan, Yu He
• Keywords: Consecutive Letters, KAIS 2006, Length Constraints, Wildcards