Faster Algorithms for Longest Common Substring

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Charalampopoulos, Panagiotis, Kociumaka, Tomasz, Radoszewski, Jakub, Pissis, Solon P.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2021
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author Charalampopoulos, Panagiotis
Kociumaka, Tomasz
Radoszewski, Jakub
Pissis, Solon P.
author_facet Charalampopoulos, Panagiotis
Kociumaka, Tomasz
Radoszewski, Jakub
Pissis, Solon P.
contents In the classic longest common substring (LCS) problem, we are given two strings $S$ and $T$, each of length at most $n$, over an alphabet of size $σ$, and we are asked to find a longest string occurring as a fragment of both $S$ and $T$. Weiner, in his seminal paper that introduced the suffix tree, presented an $O(n \log σ)$-time algorithm for this problem [SWAT 1973]. For polynomially-bounded integer alphabets, the linear-time construction of suffix trees by Farach yielded an $O(n)$-time algorithm for the LCS problem [FOCS 1997]. However, for small alphabets, this is not necessarily optimal for the LCS problem in the word RAM model of computation, in which the strings can be stored in $O(n \log σ/\log n )$ space and read in $O(n \log σ/\log n )$ time. We show that, in this model, we can compute an LCS in time $O(n \log σ/ \sqrt{\log n})$, which is sublinear in $n$ if $σ=2^{o(\sqrt{\log n})}$ (in particular, if $σ=O(1)$), using optimal space $O(n \log σ/\log n)$. In fact, it was recently shown that this result is conditionally optimal [Kempa and Kociumaka, STOC 2025]. We then lift our ideas to the problem of computing a $k$-mismatch LCS, which has received considerable attention in recent years. In this problem, the aim is to compute a longest substring of $S$ that occurs in $T$ with at most $k$ mismatches. Thankachan et al.~showed how to compute a $k$-mismatch LCS in $O(n \log^k n)$ time for $k=O(1)$ [J. Comput. Biol. 2016]. We show an $O(n \log^{k-1/2} n)$-time algorithm, for any constant $k>0$ and irrespective of the alphabet size, using $O(n)$ space as the previous approaches. We thus notably break through the well-known $n \log^k n$ barrier, which stems from a recursive heavy-path decomposition technique that was first introduced in the seminal paper of Cole et al. [STOC 2004] for string indexing with $k$ errors.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2105_03106
institution arXiv
publishDate 2021
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Faster Algorithms for Longest Common Substring
Charalampopoulos, Panagiotis
Kociumaka, Tomasz
Radoszewski, Jakub
Pissis, Solon P.
Data Structures and Algorithms
In the classic longest common substring (LCS) problem, we are given two strings $S$ and $T$, each of length at most $n$, over an alphabet of size $σ$, and we are asked to find a longest string occurring as a fragment of both $S$ and $T$. Weiner, in his seminal paper that introduced the suffix tree, presented an $O(n \log σ)$-time algorithm for this problem [SWAT 1973]. For polynomially-bounded integer alphabets, the linear-time construction of suffix trees by Farach yielded an $O(n)$-time algorithm for the LCS problem [FOCS 1997]. However, for small alphabets, this is not necessarily optimal for the LCS problem in the word RAM model of computation, in which the strings can be stored in $O(n \log σ/\log n )$ space and read in $O(n \log σ/\log n )$ time. We show that, in this model, we can compute an LCS in time $O(n \log σ/ \sqrt{\log n})$, which is sublinear in $n$ if $σ=2^{o(\sqrt{\log n})}$ (in particular, if $σ=O(1)$), using optimal space $O(n \log σ/\log n)$. In fact, it was recently shown that this result is conditionally optimal [Kempa and Kociumaka, STOC 2025]. We then lift our ideas to the problem of computing a $k$-mismatch LCS, which has received considerable attention in recent years. In this problem, the aim is to compute a longest substring of $S$ that occurs in $T$ with at most $k$ mismatches. Thankachan et al.~showed how to compute a $k$-mismatch LCS in $O(n \log^k n)$ time for $k=O(1)$ [J. Comput. Biol. 2016]. We show an $O(n \log^{k-1/2} n)$-time algorithm, for any constant $k>0$ and irrespective of the alphabet size, using $O(n)$ space as the previous approaches. We thus notably break through the well-known $n \log^k n$ barrier, which stems from a recursive heavy-path decomposition technique that was first introduced in the seminal paper of Cole et al. [STOC 2004] for string indexing with $k$ errors.
title Faster Algorithms for Longest Common Substring
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2105.03106