Faster Approximate Elastic-Degenerate String Matching - Part B

Abstract

We revisit the complexity of approximate pattern matching in an elastic-degenerate string. Such a string is a sequence of n finite sets of strings of total length N, and compactly describes a collection of strings obtained by first choosing exactly one string in every set, and then concatenating them together. This is motivated by the need of storing a collection of highly similar DNA sequences.
The basic algorithmic question on elastic-degenerate strings is pattern matching: given such an elastic-degenerate string and a standard pattern of length m, check if the pattern occurs in one of the strings in the described collection. Bernardini et al. [SICOMP 2022] showed how to leverage fast matrix multiplication to obtain an Õ(nm^{ω-1})+𝒪(N)-time complexity for this problem, where ω is the matrix multiplication exponent. However, from the point of view of possible applications, it is more desirable to work with approximate pattern matching, where we seek approximate occurrences of the pattern. This generalization has been considered in a few papers already, but the best result so far for occurrences with k mismatches, where k is a constant, is the Õ(nm²+N)-time algorithm presented in Part A [CPM 2025]. This brings the question whether increasing the dependency on m from m^{ω-1} to quadratic is necessary when moving from k = 0 to larger (but still constant) k.
We design an Õ(nm^{1.5}+N)-time algorithm for pattern matching with k mismatches in an elastic-degenerate string, for any constant k. To obtain this time bound, we leverage the structural characterization of occurrences with k mismatches of Charalampopoulos, Kociumaka, and Wellnitz [FOCS 2020] together with fast Fourier transform. We need to work with multiple patterns at the same time, instead of a single pattern, which requires refining the original characterization. This might be of independent interest.