Design and Analysis of Algorithms
String Matching Problem
(Naïve String Matching Algorithm)
Dr. D. P. Acharjya
Professor, SCOPE
SJT Annex – 201 E
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String Matching Problem
Finding all occurrences of a pattern (String) in a text
leads to string matching problem.
It arises frequently in text editing programs where text
is a document, and the string searched for is a
particular word.
String-matching algorithms are also used to search for
particular patterns in DNA sequences.
For Example:
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Mathematical Formulation
Assume that the text is an array T[1 n] of length n.
The pattern is an array P[1 m] of length m. It is to be
noted that m ≤ n.
It is to be noted that the elements of P and T are
characters drawn from a finite alphabet Σ. For example,
Σ = {0, 1} or Σ = {a, b, , z}.
The character arrays P and T are often called strings of
characters.
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Continued…
The pattern P occurs with shift s in text T (or pattern P
occurs beginning at position s + 1 in text T) if
0 ≤ s ≤ n - m and T[s+1 s+m] = P[1 m]
It means that T[s + j] = P[j], for 1 ≤ j ≤ m.
If P occurs with shift s in T, then it is a valid shift
otherwise, s is an invalid shift.
The string-matching problem is the problem of finding
all valid shifts with which a given pattern P occurs in
a given text T.
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String Matching Algorithms
1. Naïve String-matching Algorithm
2. Rabin-Karp Algorithm
3. Knuth Morris Pratt (KMP) algorithm
4. String matching with finite automata (Suffix Trees)
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Naïve String Matching Algorithm
1. NAIVE-STRING-MATCHER (T, P)
2. n ← Length[T]
3. m ←Length[P]
4. for s ← 0 to (n – m)
5. do if P[1 m] = T[s + 1 s+m]
6. then print "Pattern occurs with shift" s
The number of possible values of s is (n – m + 1)
Each time we have to check P[j] = T[s + j]; 1 j m
Computing Time is O((n – m + 1)m)
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Numerical Illustration
Consider a text T = acaabc,
find all the valid shifts for the
pattern P = aab.
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Numerical Illustration
The process terminates with a valid shift s = 2.
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Practice Problem
Show the comparisons the naive string matcher makes
for the pattern P = 0001 in the text T =
000010001010001.
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