String matching is one of the most studied issues in Computer Science. There are three well known algorithms by
It is very unlikely that a developer in this day will be asked to write one let develop a new one. However the reason for a refresher is that some problems may be modeled as a string matching problem. Besides, this is the actual reason for the refresher, they are interesting.The classic problem is described as: Given a string Y and a search string x is there a substring of Y that matches exactly with x. In C syntax a brute force algorithm is shown below
int strSearch(const char *Y, int N, const char *x, int n)
// N is the length of string Y
// n is the length of string x
{
for(int i=0; i+n <= N; ++i)
{
bool found=true;
for(j=0; found && j < n; ++j)
{
found = (Y[i+j] == x[j]);
}
if (found)
return i;
}
return -1;
}
An interesting variation is to find a substring in Y that is a permutation of the string x. Let’s try test driven development: Given a solution let us write code to verify it. In other words for some k such that 0 ≤ k < N-n, verify that the substring Y[k, k+n) is a a permutation of X. There are n! (! denotes factorial) permutations of the substring Y[k,k+n). Comparing every permutation is not viable. One solution is to reduce both strings to a canonical form that can then be compared. One such form is to sort the two strings which makes comparison possible. Thus to find a permuted substring, just slide a window of size n across Y and check if it is a permuted version of x.
int strPermuteSearch(const char *Y, int N, const char *x, int n)
// N is the length of string Y
// n is the length of string x
{
char y[n]; //C syntax not C++
sort(x,x+n);
for(int i=0; i+n <= N; ++i)
{
strncpy(y, Y+i, n);
sort(y,y+n);
if (strncmp(x,y,n)==0)
return i;
}
return -1;
}
The time complexity of this algorithm is O(N*n*Log(n)). The n*Log(n) is because of the sorting withing the loop. This can reduced to O(N*n) by using insertion sort. Since y is sorted all that is needed when i is incremented is to remove Y[i-1] from y and insert Y[i+n-1] which can be done in O(n) while keeping y sorted.
This leads to another problem. Is there a substring of Y such that some combination of n characters of the substring is a permutation of x. Again consider a verification algorithm. Given a string Z of length M where M>=n is there some collection n characters which can be permuted to match x. There are C(M,n) combinations. Trying all the combinations is not viable. Consider Z[0]. If Z[0] is present in x, our solution space is now reduced to C(M-1,n-1). If Z[0] is not present then our solution space is reduced to C(M-1,n). The algorithm terminates when n==0 which means that a result has been found or n>M which means that Z does not contain a substring which can be permuted to x.
bool Verify(const char* Z, int M, char *x, int n)
// M is the length of string Z
// n is the length of string x
{
if (n==0) return true;
if (n > M) return false;
auto i = find(x,x+n,*Z);
if ( i != x+n) {
swap(*i,*x);
return Verify(Z+1, M-1, x+1, n-1);
}
else
return Verify(Z+1,M-1,x,n);
}
If M = n, the function verifies that Z is a permutation of x. Notice that the linear search in Lines 5 and 6 push the time complexity to O(n*M). We could reduce it to O(M), if the two strings were sorted, as shown below
bool VerifySorted(const char* Z, int M, char *x, int n) {
// M is the length of string Z
// n is the length of string x
if (n==0)
return true;
else if (n > M)
return false;
else if (*Z < *x)
return VerifySorted(Z+1, M-1,x,n);
else if (*Z == *x)
return VerifySorted(Z+1,M-1,x+1,n-1);
else // *Z > *x
return false;
}
This solution can be adapted to checking if B is a subset of A, if A and B are sequences. The C++ algorithm includes does just that. Now let us restate the problem adding a simple restriction: Find the smallest substring of Y such that there exists n characters in it, which can be permuted
to match x. This can be done by sliding a window of size M where n<=M<=N and calling Verify with that window as shown below
struct position
{
int start;
int length;
};
position CombinationSubset(const char* Y, int N, char *x, int n){
// N is the length of string Y
// n is the length of string x
position result = {-1,-1};
char Z[N]; //C syntax not C++
sort(x,x+n);
for(M=n; M <= N; ++M) {
for(i=0; i+M <= N; ++i) {
strncpy(Z,Y+i,M);
sort(Z,Z+M);
if (VerifySorted(Z+i, M, x,n)) {
result.start=i;
result.length = M;
return result;
}
}
}
return result;
}
int Duplicates(const char* Y, int N){
// N is the length of string Y
sort(Y,Y+N);
auto yn = unique(Y,Y+N);
return (Y+N) - yn;
}
Problem: Are all the characters in a given string unique?
Hint Whenduplicates = 0 all the characters in the string are unique