We survey the current techniques to cope with the problem of string matching allowing errors. This is becoming a more and more relevant issue for many fast growing areas such as information retrieval and computational biology. We focus on online searching and mostly on edit distance, explaining the problem and its relevance, its statistical behavior, its history and current developments, and the central ideas of the algorithms and their complexities. We present a number of experiments to compare the performance of the different algorithms and show which are the best choices according to each case. We conclude with some future work directions and open problems. 1

The approximate string matching problem is to find all locations at which a query of length m matches a substring of a text of length n with k-or-fewer differences. Simple and practical bitvector algorithms have been designed for this problem, most notably the one used in agrep. These algorithms compute a bit representation of the current state-set of the k-difference automaton for the query, and asymptotically run in O(nmk=w) time where w is the word size of the machine (e.g. 32 or 64 in practice). Here we present an algorithm of comparable simplicity that requires only O(nm=w) time by virtue of computing a bit representation of the relocatable dynamic programming matrix for the problem. Thus the algorithm's performance is independent of k, and it is found to be more efficient than the previous results for many useful choices of k and small m. Moreover, because the algorithm is not dependent on k, it can be used to rapidly compute blocks of the dynamic programming matrix as in the ...

We present a new algorithm for on-line approximate string matching. The algorithm is based on the simulation of a non-deterministic finite automaton built from the pattern and using the text as input. This simulation uses bit operations on a RAM machine with word length w = \Omega\Gamma137 n) bits, where n is the text size. This is essentially similar to the model used in Wu and Manber's work, although we improve the search time by packing the automaton states differently. The running time achieved is O(n) for small patterns (i.e. whenever mk = O(log n)), where m is the pattern length and k ! m the number of allowed errors. This is in contrast with the result of Wu and Manber, which is O(kn) for m = O(log n). Longer patterns can be processed by partitioning the automaton into many machine words, at O(mk=w n) search cost. We allow generalizations in the pattern, such as classes of characters, gaps and others, at essentially the same search cost. We then explore other novel techniques t...

We consider the problem of comparing CUAL graphs (Connected, Undirected, Acyclic graphs with nodes being Labeled). This problem is motivated by the study of information retrieval for bio-chemical and molecular databases. Suppose we define the distance between two CUAL graphs G1 and G2 to be the weighted number of edit operations (insert node, delete node and relabel node) to transform G1 to G2. By reduction from exact cover by 3-sets, one can show that finding the distance between two CUAL graphs is NP-complete. In view of the hardness of the problem, we propose a constrained distance metric, called the degree-2 distance, by requiring that any node to be inserted (deleted) have no more than 2 neighbors. With this metric, we present an efficient algorithm to solve the problem. The algorithm runs in time O(N_1 N_2 D²) for general weighting edit operations and in time O(N_1 N_2 D √D log D) for integral weighting edit operations, where N_i, i = 1, 2, is the number of nodes in G_i, D = min{d_1, d_2} and d_i is the maximum degree of G_i.

The classical approximate string-matching problem of finding the locations of approximate occurrences P 0 of pattern string P in text string T such that the edit distance between P and P 0 is k is considered. We concentrate on the special case in which T is available for preprocessing before the searches with varying P and k. It is shown how the searches can be done fast using the suffix tree of T augmented with the suffix links as the preprocessed form of T and applying dynamic programming over the tree. Three variations of the search algorithm are developed with running times O(mq + n), O(mq log q + size of the output), and O(m

We present new algorithms for approximate string matching based in simple, but efficient, ideas. First, we present an algorithm for string matching with mismatches based in arithmetical operations that runs in linear worst case time for most practical cases. This is a new approach to string searching. Second, we present an algorithm for string matching with errors based on partitioning the pattern that requires linear expected time for typical inputs. 1 Introduction Approximate string matching is one of the main problems in combinatorial pattern matching. Recently, several new approaches emphasizing the expected search time and practicality have appeared [3, 4, 27, 32, 31, 17], in contrast to older results, most of them are only of theoretical interest. Here, we continue this trend, by presenting two new simple and efficient algorithms for approximate string matching. First, we present an algorithm for string matching with k mismatches. This problem consists of finding all instances o...

In this paper we examine string block edit distance, in which two strings A and B are compared by extracting collections of substrings and placing them into correspondence. This model accounts for certain phenomena encountered in important real-world applications, including pen computing and molecular biology. The basic problem admits a family of variations depending on whether the strings must be matched in their entireties, and whether overlap is permitted. We show that several variants are NPcomplete, and give polynomial-time algorithms for solving the remainder. Keywords: block edit distance, approximate string matching, sequence comparison, approximate ink matching, dynamic programming. 1 Introduction The edit distance model for string comparison [Lev66, NW70, WF74] has found widespread application in fields ranging from molecular biology to bird song classification [SK83]. A great deal of research has been devoted to this area, and numerous algorithms have been proposed for com...

We present the state of the art of the main component of text retrieval systems: the searching engine. We outline the main lines of research and issues involved. We survey recently published results for text searching and we explore the gap between theoretical vs. practical algorithms. The main observation is that simpler ideas are better in practice. 1597 Shaks. Lover's Compl. 2 From off a hill whose concaue wombe reworded A plaintfull story from a sistring vale. OED2, reword, sistering 1 1 Introduction Full text retrieval systems are becoming a popular way of providing support for on-line text. Their main advantage is that they avoid the complicated and expensive process of semantic indexing. From the end-user point of view, full text searching of on-line documents is appealing because a valid query is just any word or sentence of the document. However, when the desired answer cannot be obtained with a simple query, the user must perform his/her own semantic processing to guess w...

Here we introduce two new notions of approximate matching with application in computer assisted music analysis. We present algorithms for each notion of approximation: for approximate string matching and for computing approximate squares.

The string matching with mismatches problem is that of finding the number of mismatches between a pattern P of length m and every length m substring of the text T . Currently, the fastest algorithms for this problem are the following. The Landau-Vishkin algorithm finds all locations where the pattern has at most k errors (where k is part of the input) in time O(nk). The Abrahamson algorithm finds the number of mismatches at every location in time O(n p m log m). We present