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Searching A Substring - JetBrains Academy - Learn Programming by Building Your Own Apps

This document discusses algorithms for finding a substring (pattern) within a larger string (text). It begins by defining the problem and differentiating between patterns, texts, and occurrences. It then describes the simplest algorithm which works by sequentially comparing the pattern to segments of the text and shifting one character at a time until a match is found or the end is reached. An example demonstrates this process. Finally, it analyzes the algorithm's time complexity as O(|t|*|p|) where |t| and |p| are the lengths of the text and pattern, respectively. Additional variations of the substring search problem are also mentioned.

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53 views3 pages

Searching A Substring - JetBrains Academy - Learn Programming by Building Your Own Apps

This document discusses algorithms for finding a substring (pattern) within a larger string (text). It begins by defining the problem and differentiating between patterns, texts, and occurrences. It then describes the simplest algorithm which works by sequentially comparing the pattern to segments of the text and shifting one character at a time until a match is found or the end is reached. An example demonstrates this process. Finally, it analyzes the algorithm's time complexity as O(|t|*|p|) where |t| and |p| are the lengths of the text and pattern, respectively. Additional variations of the substring search problem are also mentioned.

Uploaded by

JorgeAntunes
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Computer science → Fundamentals → Algorithms and structures → Algorithms → String algorithms → Substring search algorithms

Searching a substring
Theory Practice 23% completed, 0 problems solved

Theory 1 required topic


5 minutes reading
String basics

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3 dependent topics

Search in a string
§1. The problem
Prefix function
Strings create the programming universe, being one of the most used data
structures, so it is essential to know how to handle them. Searching for a substring Rabin-Karp algorithm
is one of the skills you're likely to use quite often. For example, while working in a
text editor, you might want to find all occurrences of a particular word in a text, or
you might need to find a particular phrase on a web page without having to read Table of contents:
the entire thing. For convenience and clarity, let's differentiate: a substring that we
↑ Searching a substring
are looking for is called a pattern, and a string in which we make a search is a text.
§1. The problem
Say we have a pattern "ACA" and a text "ACBACAD". We can see that the pattern is
a substring of the text because it's contained there starting from the third and §2. The simplest algorithm
ending with the fifth symbol (assuming zero-based indexing). With this short
string, our watchful eye is enough, but in programming and with longer sequences §3. An example
we need to come up with an algorithm that can solve the problem for an arbitrary
§4. Complexity analysis
pattern and text.
§5. Additional notes

§2. The simplest algorithm Discussion

One of the simplest algorithms for finding a pattern in a text is the following:

1. Compare the pattern with the beginning of the text.


2. If every symbol of the pattern matches the corresponding symbol of the text,
we're lucky: an occurrence is found.
3. If at least one symbol of the pattern doesn't match with the corresponding
symbol of the text, the current attempt is a failure. In this case, we move the
pattern by one symbol to the right and make a comparison again.
4. Repeat steps 2 and 3 until the pattern is found or the end of the text is
reached. If none of the attempts were successful, we should indicate that
there is no such pattern in the text.

§3. An example
The picture below illustrates how this algorithm works for the pattern "ACA" and
the text "ACBACAD". To please your eye and aid your comprehension, matching
symbols are shown in green, non-matching ones are red, and those not used in the
current step are colored with a gentle blue hue:
Here's what's happening: in the first step, we compare the pattern with the very
beginning of the text. The first two symbols match but, alas, the third doesn't. The
attempt isn't successful, so we shift the pattern to the right. In the second and the
third steps, we try to compare the corresponding symbols again but have an
obvious mismatch in the first symbol. In the fourth step, all the corresponding
symbols match, so an occurrence is successfully found.

You can see that sometimes there is no need to process all the symbols of the
pattern. If we have a mismatch, say, in the first symbol, we don't need to compare
the rest. In case of failure, we can immediately shift the pattern and start a new
step: a nice life lesson to learn from.

§4. Complexity analysis


Let's denote ∣p∣ as the length of a pattern and ∣t∣ as the length of a text. In the
worst case, we need to process all ∣p∣ symbols of the pattern at every step. The
maximal number of steps is ∣t∣ − ∣p∣ + 1 (assuming ∣t∣ ≥ ∣p∣). So, the overall
running time is

(∣t∣ − ∣p∣ + 1) ⋅ ∣p∣ = ∣t∣ ⋅ ∣p∣ − ∣p∣2 + ∣p∣ = O(∣t∣ ⋅ ∣p∣)

Note that the algorithm requires O(1) of additional memory.

§5. Additional notes


For now, we've learned about the algorithm that can answer "yes" if a pattern is
present in the text and "no" if it's not. However, the problem can also be
formulated in multiple other ways. We may need to:

find the index of the first occurrence of a pattern in a text;


find all occurrences of a pattern in a text;
find all non-overlapping occurrences of a pattern in a text.

These variations will be suggested to you as a programming exercise.

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