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DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.11

Matching Regular-Typed Pattern Languages: Quadratic-Time Algorithms

Authors: Yuya Uezato

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract

Pattern languages (PAT) are a class of languages generated by expressions called patterns that may contain variables. In a pattern, each variable can be instantiated with an arbitrary string. Typed pattern languages extend PAT by associating a type (constraint) with each variable that restricts the domain of allowed substitutions. In this paper, we study regular-typed PAT (PATwRT), where all types are represented either by a regular expression or by an ε-NFA. We consider the PATwRT matching problem for patterns with a single repeated variable of the form P = α₁ β α₂ β ⋯ β α_K. We present simple algorithms whose running time is linear in K and quadratic in the input length N, with polynomial dependence on the sizes of the type representations. Our results extend previous quadratic-time work in two directions: (1) the quadratic-time algorithm for untyped PAT of Fernau et al. (STACS 2015), and (2) the quadratic-time algorithm for the restricted PATwRT K = 3, i.e., α₁ β α₂ β α₃ of Nogami and Terauchi (MFCS 2025).

Cite as

Yuya Uezato. Matching Regular-Typed Pattern Languages: Quadratic-Time Algorithms. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 11:1-11:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{uezato:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.11,
  author =	{Uezato, Yuya},
  title =	{{Matching Regular-Typed Pattern Languages: Quadratic-Time Algorithms}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{11:1--11:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.11},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259374},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.11},
  annote =	{Keywords: Pattern languages, Regular expressions, String algorithms}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14

Hardness Results on Characteristics for Elastic-Degenerate Strings

Authors: Dominik Köppl and Jannik Olbrich

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 369, 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)

Abstract

Generalizations of plain strings have been proposed as a compact way to represent a collection of nearly identical sequences or to express uncertainty at specific text positions by enumerating all possibilities. While a plain string stores a character at each of its positions, generalizations consider a set of characters (indeterminate strings), a set of strings of equal length (generalized degenerate strings, or shortly GD strings), or a set of strings of arbitrary lengths (elastic-degenerate strings, or shortly ED strings). These generalizations are of importance to compactly represent such type of data, and find applications in bioinformatics for representing and maintaining a set of genetic sequences of the same taxonomy or a multiple sequence alignment. To be of use, attention has been drawn to answering various query types such as pattern matching or measuring similarity of ED strings by generalizing techniques known to plain strings. However, for some types of queries, it has been shown that a generalization of a polynomial-time solvable query on classic strings becomes NP-hard on ED strings, e.g. [Russo et al., 2022]. In that light, we wonder about other types of queries that are of particular interest to bioinformatics: unique substrings, absent words, anti-powers, longest previous factors, and Lempel-Ziv-like compression schemes. While we obtain a polynomial time algorithm for a variation of longest previous factors, we show that all other problems are NP-hard to compute, some of them even under the restriction that the input can be modeled as an indeterminate or GD string.

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Dominik Köppl and Jannik Olbrich. Hardness Results on Characteristics for Elastic-Degenerate Strings. In 37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 369, pp. 14:1-14:25, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{koppl_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14,
  author =	{K\"{o}ppl, Dominik and Olbrich, Jannik},
  title =	{{Hardness Results on Characteristics for Elastic-Degenerate Strings}},
  booktitle =	{37th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2026)},
  pages =	{14:1--14:25},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-420-8},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{369},
  editor =	{Bille, Philip and Prezza, Nicola},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-259409},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2026.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: Elastic-degenerate strings, NP-hardness, longest common factor, minimal unique substring, minimal absent word, anti-power, longest previous factor}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.13

Faster Algorithms for Shortest Unique or Absent Substrings

Authors: Panagiotis Charalampopoulos, Manal Mohamed, Solon P. Pissis, Hilde Verbeek, and Wiktor Zuba

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 370, 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)

Abstract

We revisit two well-known algorithmic problems on strings: computing a shortest unique substring (SUS) and a shortest absent substring (SAS) in a string S of length n. Both problems admit folklore 𝒪(n)-time solutions using the suffix tree of S. However, for small alphabets, this complexity is not necessarily optimal in the word RAM model, where a string of length n over alphabet [0,σ) can be stored in 𝒪(n log σ/log n) space and read in 𝒪(n log σ/log n) time. We present an 𝒪(n log σ/√{log n})-time algorithm for computing a SUS in S. This algorithm decomposes the problem according to the length and the period of the sought substring and uses several tools and techniques, such as synchronizing sets, the analysis of runs, and wavelet trees, to reduce the computation of a SUS to a simple geometric problem. Further, we adapt this algorithm and combine it with an efficient construction of de Bruijn sequences in order to obtain an 𝒪(n log σ/√{log n})-time algorithm for computing a SAS in S.

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Panagiotis Charalampopoulos, Manal Mohamed, Solon P. Pissis, Hilde Verbeek, and Wiktor Zuba. Faster Algorithms for Shortest Unique or Absent Substrings. In 20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 370, pp. 13:1-13:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{charalampopoulos_et_al:LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.13,
  author =	{Charalampopoulos, Panagiotis and Mohamed, Manal and Pissis, Solon P. and Verbeek, Hilde and Zuba, Wiktor},
  title =	{{Faster Algorithms for Shortest Unique or Absent Substrings}},
  booktitle =	{20th Scandinavian Symposium on Algorithm Theory (SWAT 2026)},
  pages =	{13:1--13:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-421-5},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{370},
  editor =	{Fraigniaud, Pierre},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.13},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-260493},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.SWAT.2026.13},
  annote =	{Keywords: string algorithms, unique substrings, absent substrings, absent words}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.5

On the Complexity of Language Membership for Probabilistic Words

Authors: Antoine Amarilli, Mikaël Monet, Paul Raphaël, and Sylvain Salvati

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 364, 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)

Abstract

We study the membership problem to context-free languages L (CFLs) on probabilistic words, that specify for each position a probability distribution on the letters (assuming independence across positions). Our task is to compute, given a probabilistic word, what is the probability that a word drawn according to the distribution belongs to L. This problem generalizes the problem of counting how many words of length n belong to L, or of counting how many completions of a partial word belong to L. We show that this problem is in polynomial time for unambiguous context-free languages (uCFLs), but can be #P-hard already for unions of two linear uCFLs. More generally, we show that the problem is in polynomial time for so-called poly-slicewise-unambiguous languages, where given a length n we can tractably compute an uCFL for the words of length n in the language. This class includes some inherently ambiguous languages, and implies the tractability of bounded CFLs and of languages recognized by unambiguous polynomial-time counter automata; but we show that the problem can be #P-hard for nondeterministic counter automata, even for Parikh automata with a single counter. We then introduce classes of circuits from knowledge compilation which we use for tractable counting, and show that this covers the tractability of poly-slicewise-unambiguous languages and of some CFLs that are not poly-slicewise-unambiguous. Extending these circuits with negation further allows us to show tractability for the language of primitive words, and for the language of concatenations of two palindromes. We finally show the conditional undecidability of the meta-problem that asks, given a CFG, whether the probabilistic membership problem for that CFG is tractable or #P-hard.

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Antoine Amarilli, Mikaël Monet, Paul Raphaël, and Sylvain Salvati. On the Complexity of Language Membership for Probabilistic Words. In 43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 364, pp. 5:1-5:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{amarilli_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2026.5,
  author =	{Amarilli, Antoine and Monet, Mika\"{e}l and Rapha\"{e}l, Paul and Salvati, Sylvain},
  title =	{{On the Complexity of Language Membership for Probabilistic Words}},
  booktitle =	{43rd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2026)},
  pages =	{5:1--5:21},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-412-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{364},
  editor =	{Mahajan, Meena and Manea, Florin and McIver, Annabelle and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.5},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-254943},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2026.5},
  annote =	{Keywords: Automaton, probabilistic words, context-free grammar, membership problem}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2026.28

Resourceful Traces for Commuting Processes

Authors: Matthew Earnshaw, Chad Nester, and Mario Román

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 363, 34th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2026)

Abstract

We show that, when the actions of a Mazurkiewicz trace are considered not merely as atomic but as transformations from a specified type of inputs to a specified type of outputs, we obtain a novel notion of presentation for effectful categories (also known as generalized Freyd categories), a well-known algebraic structure in the semantics of side-effecting computation. Like the usual representation of traces as graphs, our notion of presentation gives rise to a graphical representation of morphisms in effectful categories. We use our presentations to give a construction of the commuting tensor product of free effectful categories, capturing the combination of systems in which the actions of each must commute with one another, while still permitting exchange of resources.

Cite as

Matthew Earnshaw, Chad Nester, and Mario Román. Resourceful Traces for Commuting Processes. In 34th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 363, pp. 28:1-28:20, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026)

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@InProceedings{earnshaw_et_al:LIPIcs.CSL.2026.28,
  author =	{Earnshaw, Matthew and Nester, Chad and Rom\'{a}n, Mario},
  title =	{{Resourceful Traces for Commuting Processes}},
  booktitle =	{34th EACSL Annual Conference on Computer Science Logic (CSL 2026)},
  pages =	{28:1--28:20},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-411-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2026},
  volume =	{363},
  editor =	{Guerrini, Stefano and K\"{o}nig, Barbara},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2026.28},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-254522},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CSL.2026.28},
  annote =	{Keywords: Mazurkiewicz traces, premonoidal categories, monoidal categories, effectful categories}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.9

Linear Time Subsequence and Supersequence Regex Matching

Authors: Antoine Amarilli, Florin Manea, Tina Ringleb, and Markus L. Schmid

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract

It is well-known that checking whether a given string w matches a given regular expression r can be done in quadratic time O(|w|⋅ |r|) and that this cannot be improved to a truly subquadratic running time of O((|w|⋅ |r|)^{1-ε}) assuming the strong exponential time hypothesis (SETH). We study a different matching paradigm where we ask instead whether w has a subsequence that matches r, and show that regex matching in this sense can be solved in linear time O(|w| + |r|). Further, the same holds if we ask for a supersequence. We show that the quantitative variants where we want to compute a longest or shortest subsequence or supersequence of w that matches r can be solved in O(|w|⋅ |r|), i. e., asymptotically no worse than classical regex matching; and we show that O(|w| + |r|) is conditionally not possible for these problems. We also investigate these questions with respect to other natural string relations like the infix, prefix, left-extension or extension relation instead of the subsequence and supersequence relation. We further study the complexity of the universal problem where we ask if all subsequences (or supersequences, infixes, prefixes, left-extensions or extensions) of an input string satisfy a given regular expression.

Cite as

Antoine Amarilli, Florin Manea, Tina Ringleb, and Markus L. Schmid. Linear Time Subsequence and Supersequence Regex Matching. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 9:1-9:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{amarilli_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.9,
  author =	{Amarilli, Antoine and Manea, Florin and Ringleb, Tina and Schmid, Markus L.},
  title =	{{Linear Time Subsequence and Supersequence Regex Matching}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{9:1--9:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.9},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241162},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.9},
  annote =	{Keywords: subsequence, supersequence, regular language, regular expression, automata}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.81

Efficient Matching of Some Fundamental Regular Expressions with Backreferences

Authors: Taisei Nogami and Tachio Terauchi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 345, 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)

Abstract

Regular expression matching is of practical importance due to its widespread use in real-world applications. In practical use, regular expressions are often used with real-world extensions. Accordingly, the matching problem of regular expressions with real-world extensions has been actively studied in recent years, yielding steady progress. However, backreference, a popular extension supported by most modern programming languages such as Java, Python, JavaScript and others in their standard libraries for string processing, is an exception to this positive trend. In fact, it is known that the matching problem of regular expressions with backreferences (rewbs) is theoretically hard and the existence of an asymptotically fast matching algorithm for arbitrary rewbs seems unlikely. Even among currently known partial solutions, the balance between efficiency and generality remains unsatisfactory. To bridge this gap, we present an efficient matching algorithm for rewbs of the form e_0 (e)_1 e_1 \1 e_2 where e_0, e, e_1, e_2 are pure regular expressions, which are fundamental and frequently used in practical applications. It runs in quadratic time with respect to the input string length, substantially improving the best-known cubic time complexity for these rewbs. Our algorithm combines ideas from both stringology and automata theory in a novel way. We leverage two techniques from automata theory, injection and summarization, to simultaneously examine matches whose backreferenced substrings are either a fixed right-maximal repeat or its extendable prefixes, which are concepts from stringology. By further utilizing a subtle property of extendable prefixes, our algorithm correctly decides the matching problem while achieving the quadratic-time complexity.

Cite as

Taisei Nogami and Tachio Terauchi. Efficient Matching of Some Fundamental Regular Expressions with Backreferences. In 50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 345, pp. 81:1-81:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{nogami_et_al:LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.81,
  author =	{Nogami, Taisei and Terauchi, Tachio},
  title =	{{Efficient Matching of Some Fundamental Regular Expressions with Backreferences}},
  booktitle =	{50th International Symposium on Mathematical Foundations of Computer Science (MFCS 2025)},
  pages =	{81:1--81:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-388-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{345},
  editor =	{Gawrychowski, Pawe{\l} and Mazowiecki, Filip and Skrzypczak, Micha{\l}},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.81},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-241886},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.MFCS.2025.81},
  annote =	{Keywords: Regular expressions, Backreferences, Regex matching, NFA simulation, Suffix arrays, Right-maximal repeats}
}

Document

Research

DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.14

Specific Patterns Against Reference Sequences

Authors: Marie-Pierre Béal and Maxime Crochemore

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 132, From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday (2025)

Abstract

We design alignment-free techniques for comparing a set of sequences or just a word, called a target, against another set of words, called a reference. This is done with the detection of factor patterns that distinguish the target from the reference. A target-specific factor of a target T against a reference R is then a factor w of a word in T that is not a factor of a word in R but whose proper factors of w are factors of a word in R. The strategy is based on the notion of minimal absent/forbidden words. We first address the computation of the set of target-specific factors of a target T against a reference R, where T and R are finite sets of sequences. The result is the construction of an automaton accepting the set of all considered target-specific factors. The construction algorithm runs in linear time according to the size of T ∪ R. The second result is the design of an algorithm to compute all the occurrences in a single sequence T of its target-specific factors against a reference R. The algorithm runs in real-time on the target sequence, independently of the number of occurrences of target-specific factors.

Cite as

Marie-Pierre Béal and Maxime Crochemore. Specific Patterns Against Reference Sequences. In From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 132, pp. 14:1-14:12, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{beal_et_al:OASIcs.Grossi.14,
  author =	{B\'{e}al, Marie-Pierre and Crochemore, Maxime},
  title =	{{Specific Patterns Against Reference Sequences}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{14:1--14:12},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-391-1},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{132},
  editor =	{Conte, Alessio and Marino, Andrea and Rosone, Giovanna and Vitter, Jeffrey Scott},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.14},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238130},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.14},
  annote =	{Keywords: Specific pattern, Minimal absent word, Minimal forbidden word, Directed Acyclic Word Graph (DAWG), Suffix automaton}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.11

Circular Dictionary Matching Using Extended BWT

Authors: Wing-Kai Hon, Rahul Shah, and Sharma V. Thankachan

Published in: OASIcs, Volume 131, The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday (2025)

Abstract

The dictionary matching problem involves preprocessing a set of strings (patterns) into a data structure that efficiently identifies all occurrences of these patterns within a query string (text). In this work, we investigate a variation of this problem, termed circular dictionary matching, where the patterns are circular, meaning their cyclic shifts are also considered valid patterns. Such patterns naturally occur in areas such as bioinformatics and computational geometry. Based on the extended Burrows-Wheeler Transformation (eBWT), we design a space-efficient solution for this problem. Specifically, we show that a dictionary of d circular patterns of total length n can be indexed in nlog σ + O(n+dlog n+σ log n) bits of space and support circular dictionary matching on a query text T in O((|T|+occ)log n) time, where σ represents the size of the underlying alphabet and occ represents the output size.

Cite as

Wing-Kai Hon, Rahul Shah, and Sharma V. Thankachan. Circular Dictionary Matching Using Extended BWT. In The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 131, pp. 11:1-11:14, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{hon_et_al:OASIcs.Manzini.11,
  author =	{Hon, Wing-Kai and Shah, Rahul and Thankachan, Sharma V.},
  title =	{{Circular Dictionary Matching Using Extended BWT}},
  booktitle =	{The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{11:1--11:14},
  series =	{Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-390-4},
  ISSN =	{2190-6807},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{131},
  editor =	{Ferragina, Paolo and Gagie, Travis and Navarro, Gonzalo},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.11},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239195},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.11},
  annote =	{Keywords: String algorithms, Burrows-Wheeler transformation, suffix trees, succinct data structures}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.4

The Equivalence Problem of E-Pattern Languages with Length Constraints Is Undecidable

Authors: Dirk Nowotka and Max Wiedenhöft

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 331, 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)

Abstract

Patterns are words with terminals and variables. The language of a pattern is the set of words obtained by uniformly substituting all variables with words that contain only terminals. Length constraints restrict valid substitutions of variables by associating the variables of a pattern with a system (or disjunction of systems) of linear diophantine inequalities. Pattern languages with length constraints contain only words in which all variables are substituted to words with lengths that fulfill such a given set of length constraints. We consider membership, inclusion, and equivalence problems for erasing and non-erasing pattern languages with length constraints. Our main result shows that the erasing equivalence problem - one of the most prominent open problems in the realm of patterns - becomes undecidable if length constraints are allowed in addition to variable equality. Additionally, it is shown that the terminal-free inclusion problem, a prominent problem which has been shown to be undecidable in the binary case for patterns without any constraints, is also generally undecidable for all larger alphabets in this setting. Finally, we also show that considering regular constraints, i.e., associating variables also with regular languages as additional restrictions together with length constraints for valid substitutions, results in undecidability of the non-erasing equivalence problem. This sets a first upper bound on constraints to obtain undecidability in this case, as this problem is trivially decidable in the case of no constraints and as it has unknown decidability if only regular or only length constraints are considered.

Cite as

Dirk Nowotka and Max Wiedenhöft. The Equivalence Problem of E-Pattern Languages with Length Constraints Is Undecidable. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 4:1-4:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{nowotka_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.4,
  author =	{Nowotka, Dirk and Wiedenh\"{o}ft, Max},
  title =	{{The Equivalence Problem of E-Pattern Languages with Length Constraints Is Undecidable}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{4:1--4:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-369-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{331},
  editor =	{Bonizzoni, Paola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.4},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-230988},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.4},
  annote =	{Keywords: Patterns, Pattern Languages, Length Constraints, Regular Constraints, Decidability, Undecidability, Membership, Inclusion, Equivalence}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.10

A Family of Partial Cubes with Minimal Fibonacci Dimension

Authors: Marcella Anselmo, Giuseppa Castiglione, Manuela Flores, Dora Giammarresi, Maria Madonia, and Sabrina Mantaci

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 331, 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)

Abstract

A partial cube G is a graph that admits an isometric embedding into some hypercube Q_k. This implies that vertices of G can be labeled with binary words of length k in a way that the distance between two vertices in the graph corresponds to the Hamming distance between their labels. The minimum k for which this embedding is possible is called the isometric dimension of G, denoted idim(G). A Fibonacci cube Γ_k is the partial cube obtained by deleting all the vertices in Q_k whose labels contain word 11 as factor. It turns out that any partial cube can be always isometrically embedded also in a Fibonacci cube Γ_d. The minimum d is called the Fibonacci dimension of G, denoted fdim(G). In general, idim(G) ≤ fdim(G) ≤ 2 ⋅ idim(G) -1. Despite there is a quadratic algorithm to compute the isometric dimension of a graph, the problem of checking, for a given G, whether idim(G) = fdim(G) is in general NP-complete. An important family of graphs for which this happens are the trees. We consider a kind of generalized Fibonacci cubes that were recently defined. They are the subgraphs of the hypercube Q_k that include only vertices that avoid words in a given set S and are referred to as Q_k(S). We prove some conditions on the words in S to obtain a family of partial cubes with minimal Fibonacci dimension equal to the isometric dimension.

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Marcella Anselmo, Giuseppa Castiglione, Manuela Flores, Dora Giammarresi, Maria Madonia, and Sabrina Mantaci. A Family of Partial Cubes with Minimal Fibonacci Dimension. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 10:1-10:16, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{anselmo_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.10,
  author =	{Anselmo, Marcella and Castiglione, Giuseppa and Flores, Manuela and Giammarresi, Dora and Madonia, Maria and Mantaci, Sabrina},
  title =	{{A Family of Partial Cubes with Minimal Fibonacci Dimension}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{10:1--10:16},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-369-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{331},
  editor =	{Bonizzoni, Paola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.10},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231044},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.10},
  annote =	{Keywords: Isometric sets of words, Hypercubes, Partial cubes, Isometric dimension, Generalized Fibonacci Cubes}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.16

Net Occurrences in Fibonacci and Thue-Morse Words

Authors: Peaker Guo and Kaisei Kishi

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 331, 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)

Abstract

A net occurrence of a repeated string in a text is an occurrence with unique left and right extensions, and the net frequency of the string is the number of its net occurrences in the text. Originally introduced for applications in Natural Language Processing, net frequency has recently gained attention for its algorithmic aspects. Guo et al. [CPM 2024] and Ohlebusch et al. [SPIRE 2024] focus on its computation in the offline setting, while Guo et al. [SPIRE 2024], Inenaga [arXiv 2024], and Mieno and Inenaga [CPM 2025] tackle the online counterpart. Mieno and Inenaga also characterize net occurrences in terms of the minimal unique substrings of the text. Additionally, Guo et al. [CPM 2024] initiate the study of net occurrences in Fibonacci words to establish a lower bound on the asymptotic running time of algorithms. Although there has been notable progress in algorithmic developments and some initial combinatorial insights, the combinatorial aspects of net occurrences have yet to be thoroughly examined. In this work, we make two key contributions. First, we confirm the conjecture that each Fibonacci word contains exactly three net occurrences. Second, we show that each Thue-Morse word contains exactly nine net occurrences. To achieve these results, we introduce the notion of overlapping net occurrence cover, which narrows down the candidate net occurrences in any text. Furthermore, we provide a precise characterization of occurrences of Fibonacci and Thue-Morse words of smaller order, offering structural insights that may have independent interest and potential applications in algorithm analysis and combinatorial properties of these words.

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Peaker Guo and Kaisei Kishi. Net Occurrences in Fibonacci and Thue-Morse Words. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 16:1-16:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{guo_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.16,
  author =	{Guo, Peaker and Kishi, Kaisei},
  title =	{{Net Occurrences in Fibonacci and Thue-Morse Words}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{16:1--16:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-369-0},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{331},
  editor =	{Bonizzoni, Paola and M\"{a}kinen, Veli},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.16},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231107},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.16},
  annote =	{Keywords: Fibonacci words, Thue-Morse words, net occurrence, net frequency, factorization}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2025.61

Efficiently Computing the Minimum Rank of a Matrix in a Monoid of Zero-One Matrices

Authors: Stefan Kiefer and Andrew Ryzhikov

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 327, 42nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2025)

Abstract

A zero-one matrix is a matrix with entries from {0, 1}. We study monoids containing only such matrices. A finite set of zero-one matrices generating such a monoid can be seen as the matrix representation of an unambiguous finite automaton, an important generalisation of deterministic finite automata which shares many of their good properties. Let 𝒜 be a finite set of n×n zero-one matrices generating a monoid of zero-one matrices, and m be the cardinality of 𝒜. We study the computational complexity of computing the minimum rank of a matrix in the monoid generated by 𝒜. By using linear-algebraic techniques, we show that this problem is in NC and can be solved in 𝒪(mn⁴) time. We also provide a combinatorial algorithm finding a matrix of minimum rank in 𝒪(n^{2 + ω} + mn⁴) time, where 2 ≤ ω ≤ 2.4 is the matrix multiplication exponent. As a byproduct, we show a very weak version of a generalisation of the Černý conjecture: there always exists a straight line program of size 𝒪(n²) describing a product resulting in a matrix of minimum rank. For the special case corresponding to complete DFAs (that is, for the case where all matrices have exactly one 1 in each row), the minimum rank is the size of the smallest image of the set of states under the action of a word. Our combinatorial algorithm finds a matrix of minimum rank in time 𝒪(n³ + mn²) in this case.

Cite as

Stefan Kiefer and Andrew Ryzhikov. Efficiently Computing the Minimum Rank of a Matrix in a Monoid of Zero-One Matrices. In 42nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 327, pp. 61:1-61:22, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{kiefer_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2025.61,
  author =	{Kiefer, Stefan and Ryzhikov, Andrew},
  title =	{{Efficiently Computing the Minimum Rank of a Matrix in a Monoid of Zero-One Matrices}},
  booktitle =	{42nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2025)},
  pages =	{61:1--61:22},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-365-2},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2025},
  volume =	{327},
  editor =	{Beyersdorff, Olaf and Pilipczuk, Micha{\l} and Pimentel, Elaine and Thắng, Nguy\~{ê}n Kim},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2025.61},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-228867},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2025.61},
  annote =	{Keywords: matrix monoids, minimum rank, unambiguous automata}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2024.28

Subsequence Matching and Analysis Problems for Formal Languages

Authors: Szilárd Zsolt Fazekas, Tore Koß, Florin Manea, Robert Mercaş, and Timo Specht

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 322, 35th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2024)

Abstract

In this paper, we study a series of algorithmic problems related to the subsequences occurring in the strings of a given language, under the assumption that this language is succinctly represented by a grammar generating it, or an automaton accepting it. In particular, we focus on the following problems: Given a string w and a language L, does there exist a word of L which has w as subsequence? Do all words of L have w as a subsequence? Given an integer k alongside L, does there exist a word of L which has all strings of length k, over the alphabet of L, as subsequences? Do all words of L have all strings of length k as subsequences? For the last two problems, efficient algorithms were already presented in [Adamson et al., ISAAC 2023] for the case when L is a regular language, and efficient solutions can be easily obtained for the first two problems. We extend that work as follows: we give sufficient conditions on the class of input-languages, under which these problems are decidable; we provide efficient algorithms for all these problems in the case when the input language is context-free; we show that all problems are undecidable for context-sensitive languages. Finally, we provide a series of initial results related to a class of languages that strictly includes the regular languages and is strictly included in the class of context-sensitive languages, but is incomparable to the of class context-free languages; these results deviate significantly from those reported for language-classes from the Chomsky hierarchy.

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Szilárd Zsolt Fazekas, Tore Koß, Florin Manea, Robert Mercaş, and Timo Specht. Subsequence Matching and Analysis Problems for Formal Languages. In 35th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 322, pp. 28:1-28:23, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{fazekas_et_al:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2024.28,
  author =	{Fazekas, Szil\'{a}rd Zsolt and Ko{\ss}, Tore and Manea, Florin and Merca\c{s}, Robert and Specht, Timo},
  title =	{{Subsequence Matching and Analysis Problems for Formal Languages}},
  booktitle =	{35th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2024)},
  pages =	{28:1--28:23},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-354-6},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{322},
  editor =	{Mestre, Juli\'{a}n and Wirth, Anthony},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2024.28},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-221551},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2024.28},
  annote =	{Keywords: Stringology, String Combinatorics, Subsequence, Formal Languages, Context-Free Languages, Context-Sensitive Languages}
}

Document

DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2015.302

Pattern Matching with Variables: Fast Algorithms and New Hardness Results

Authors: Henning Fernau, Florin Manea, Robert Mercas, and Markus L. Schmid

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 30, 32nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2015)

Abstract

A pattern (i. e., a string of variables and terminals) maps to a word, if this is obtained by uniformly replacing the variables by terminal words; deciding this is NP-complete. We present efficient algorithms\footnote{The computational model we use is the standard unit-cost RAM with logarithmic word size. Also, all logarithms appearing in our time complexity evaluations are in base 2.} that solve this problem for restricted classes of patterns. Furthermore, we show that it is NP-complete to decide, for a given number k and a word w, whether w can be factorised into k distinct factors; this shows that the injective version (i.e., different variables are replaced by different words) of the above matching problem is NP-complete even for very restricted cases.

Cite as

Henning Fernau, Florin Manea, Robert Mercas, and Markus L. Schmid. Pattern Matching with Variables: Fast Algorithms and New Hardness Results. In 32nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2015). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 30, pp. 302-315, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2015)

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@InProceedings{fernau_et_al:LIPIcs.STACS.2015.302,
  author =	{Fernau, Henning and Manea, Florin and Mercas, Robert and Schmid, Markus L.},
  title =	{{Pattern Matching with Variables: Fast Algorithms and New Hardness Results}},
  booktitle =	{32nd International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2015)},
  pages =	{302--315},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-939897-78-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2015},
  volume =	{30},
  editor =	{Mayr, Ernst W. and Ollinger, Nicolas},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2015.302},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-49220},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2015.302},
  annote =	{Keywords: combinatorial pattern matching, combinatorics on words, patterns with variables, \$\{cal NP\}\$-complete string problems}
}

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