We show that suffix trees store various kinds of redundant information. We exploit these redundancies to obtain more space efficient representations. The most space efficient of our representations requires 20 bytes per input character in the worst case, and 10.1 bytes per input character on average for a collection of 42 files of different type. This is an advantage of more than 8 bytes per input character over previous work. Our representations can be constructed without extra space, and as fast as previous representations. The asymptotic running times of suffix tree applications are retained. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. KEY WORDS: data structures; suffix trees; implementation techniques; space reduction

Abstract. In large scale applications as computational genome analysis, the space requirement of the suffix tree is a severe drawback. In this paper, we present a uniform framework that enables us to systematically replace every string processing algorithm that is based on a bottomup traversal of a suffix tree by a corresponding algorithm based on an enhanced suffix array (a suffix array enhanced with the lcp-table). In this framework, we will show how maximal, supermaximal, and tandem repeats, as well as maximal unique matches can be efficiently computed. Because enhanced suffix arrays require much less space than suffix trees, very large genomes can now be indexed and analyzed, a task which was not feasible before. Experimental results demonstrate that our programs require not only less space but also much less time than other programs developed for the same tasks. 1