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Documents authored by Cotumaccio, Nicola

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DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.17
On Inverting the Burrows-Wheeler Transform

Authors: Nicola Cotumaccio

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

Abstract
We study the relationship between four fundamental problems: sorting, suffix sorting, element distinctness and BWT inversion. Our main contribution is an Ω(n log n) lower bound for BWT inversion in the comparison model. As a corollary, we obtain a new proof of the classical Ω(n log n) lower bound for sorting, which we believe to be of didactic interest for those who are not familiar with the Burrows-Wheeler transform.
Cite as

Nicola Cotumaccio. On Inverting the Burrows-Wheeler Transform. 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. 17:1-17:8, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{cotumaccio:OASIcs.Grossi.17,
  author =	{Cotumaccio, Nicola},
  title =	{{On Inverting the Burrows-Wheeler Transform}},
  booktitle =	{From Strings to Graphs, and Back Again: A Festschrift for Roberto Grossi's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{17:1--17:8},
  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.17},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-238169},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Grossi.17},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler transform, sorting, suffix array, element distinctness}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.12
Wheeler Graphs and Wheeler Languages

Authors: Nicola Cotumaccio, Giovanna D'Agostino, Daniel Gibney, Alberto Policriti, Nicola Prezza, 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
Suffix sorting stands at the core of the most efficient solutions for indexed pattern matching: the suffix tree, the suffix array, compressed indexes based on the Burrows-Wheeler transform, and so on. In [Gagie, Manzini, Sirén, TCS 2017] this concept was extended to labeled graphs, obtaining the rich class of Wheeler graphs. This work opened a very fruitful line of research, ultimately generating results able to bridge the fields of compressed data structures, graph theory, and regular language theory. In a Wheeler graph, nodes are sorted according to the alphabetic order of their incoming labels, propagating this order through pairs of equally-labeled edges. This apparently-simple definition makes it possible to solve on Wheeler graphs problems (including, but not limited to: compression, subpath queries, NFA equivalence, determinization, minimization) that on general labeled graphs are extremely hard to solve, and induces a rich structure in the class of regular languages (Wheeler languages) recognized by automata whose state transition is a Wheeler graph. The goal of this survey is to provide a summary of (and intuitions behind) the results on Wheeler graphs that appeared in the literature since their introduction, in addition to a discussion of interesting problems that are still open in the field.
Cite as

Nicola Cotumaccio, Giovanna D'Agostino, Daniel Gibney, Alberto Policriti, Nicola Prezza, and Sharma V. Thankachan. Wheeler Graphs and Wheeler Languages. In The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday. Open Access Series in Informatics (OASIcs), Volume 131, pp. 12:1-12:28, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{cotumaccio_et_al:OASIcs.Manzini.12,
  author =	{Cotumaccio, Nicola and D'Agostino, Giovanna and Gibney, Daniel and Policriti, Alberto and Prezza, Nicola and Thankachan, Sharma V.},
  title =	{{Wheeler Graphs and Wheeler Languages}},
  booktitle =	{The Expanding World of Compressed Data: A Festschrift for Giovanni Manzini's 60th Birthday},
  pages =	{12:1--12:28},
  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.12},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-239205},
  doi =		{10.4230/OASIcs.Manzini.12},
  annote =	{Keywords: Wheeler languages, Wheeler graphs, pattern matching, indexing, compressed data structures}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.15
Encoding Co-Lex Orders of Finite-State Automata in Linear Space

Authors: Ruben Becker, Nicola Cotumaccio, Sung-Hwan Kim, Nicola Prezza, and Carlo Tosoni

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

Abstract
The Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT) is a string transformation that enhances string indexing and compressibility. Cotumaccio and Prezza [SODA '21] extended this transformation to nondeterministic finite automata (NFAs) through co-lexicographic partial orders, i.e., by sorting the states of an NFA according to the co-lexicographic order of the strings reaching them. As the BWT of an NFA shares many properties with its original string variant, the transformation can be used to implement indices for locating specific patterns on the NFA itself. The efficiency of the resulting index is influenced by the width of the partial order on the states: the smaller the width, the faster the index. The most efficient index for arbitrary NFAs currently known in the literature is based on the coarsest forward-stable co-lex (CFS) order of Becker et al. [SPIRE '24]. In this paper, we prove that this CFS order can be encoded within linear space in the number of states in the automaton. The importance of this result stems from the fact that encoding such an order in linear space represents a big first step in the direction of building the index based on this order in near-linear time - the biggest open research question in this context. The currently most efficient known algorithm for this task run in quadratic time in the number of transitions in the NFA and are thus infeasible to run on very large graphs (e.g., pangenome graphs). At this point, a near-linear time algorithm is solely known for the simpler case of deterministic automata [Becker et al., ESA '23] and, in fact, this algorithmic result was enabled by a linear space encoding for deterministic automata [Kim et al., CPM '23].
Cite as

Ruben Becker, Nicola Cotumaccio, Sung-Hwan Kim, Nicola Prezza, and Carlo Tosoni. Encoding Co-Lex Orders of Finite-State Automata in Linear Space. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 15:1-15:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{becker_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.15,
  author =	{Becker, Ruben and Cotumaccio, Nicola and Kim, Sung-Hwan and Prezza, Nicola and Tosoni, Carlo},
  title =	{{Encoding Co-Lex Orders of Finite-State Automata in Linear Space}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{15:1--15:17},
  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.2025.15},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231094},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.15},
  annote =	{Keywords: Burrows-Wheeler Transform, Co-Lexicographic Orders, Nondeterministic Finite Automata, Graph Walks}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.18
Improved Circular Dictionary Matching

Authors: Nicola Cotumaccio

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

Abstract
The circular dictionary matching problem is an extension of the classical dictionary matching problem where every string in the dictionary is interpreted as a circular string: after reading the last character of a string, we can move back to its first character. The circular dictionary matching problem is motivated by applications in bioinformatics and computational geometry. In 2011, Hon et al. [ISAAC 2011] showed how to efficiently solve circular dictionary matching queries within compressed space by building on Mantaci et al.’s eBWT and Sadakane’s compressed suffix tree. The proposed solution is based on the assumption that the strings in the dictionary are all distinct and non-periodic, no string is a circular rotation of some other string, and the strings in the dictionary have similar lengths. In this paper, we consider arbitrary dictionaries, and we show how to solve circular dictionary matching queries in O((m + occ) log n) time within compressed space using n log σ (1 + o(1)) + O(n) + O(d log n) bits, where n is the total length of the dictionary, m is the length of the pattern, occ is the number of occurrences, d is the number of strings in the dictionary and σ is the size of the alphabet. Our solution is based on an extension of the suffix array to arbitrary dictionaries and a sampling mechanism for the LCP array of a dictionary inspired by recent results in graph indexing and compression.
Cite as

Nicola Cotumaccio. Improved Circular Dictionary Matching. In 36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 331, pp. 18:1-18:17, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2025)

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@InProceedings{cotumaccio:LIPIcs.CPM.2025.18,
  author =	{Cotumaccio, Nicola},
  title =	{{Improved Circular Dictionary Matching}},
  booktitle =	{36th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2025)},
  pages =	{18:1--18:17},
  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.2025.18},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-231122},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2025.18},
  annote =	{Keywords: Circular pattern matching, dictionary matching, suffix tree, compressed suffix tree, suffix array, LCP array, Burrows-Wheeler Transform, FM-index}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2024.1
Computing the LCP Array of a Labeled Graph

Authors: Jarno N. Alanko, Davide Cenzato, Nicola Cotumaccio, Sung-Hwan Kim, Giovanni Manzini, and Nicola Prezza

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 296, 35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2024)

Abstract
The LCP array is an important tool in stringology, allowing to speed up pattern matching algorithms and enabling compact representations of the suffix tree. Recently, Conte et al. [DCC 2023] and Cotumaccio et al. [SPIRE 2023] extended the definition of this array to Wheeler DFAs and, ultimately, to arbitrary labeled graphs, proving that it can be used to efficiently solve matching statistics queries on the graph’s paths. In this paper, we provide the first efficient algorithm building the LCP array of a directed labeled graph with n nodes and m edges labeled over an alphabet of size σ. The first step is to transform the input graph G into a deterministic Wheeler pseudoforest G_{is} with O(n) edges encoding the lexicographically- smallest and largest strings entering in each node of the original graph. Using state-of-the-art algorithms, this step runs in O(min{mlog n, m+n²}) time on arbitrary labeled graphs, and in O(m) time on Wheeler DFAs. The LCP array of G stores the longest common prefixes between those strings, i.e. it can easily be derived from the LCP array of G_{is}. After arguing that the natural generalization of a compact-space LCP-construction algorithm by Beller et al. [J. Discrete Algorithms 2013] runs in time Ω(nσ) on pseudoforests, we present a new algorithm based on dynamic range stabbing building the LCP array of G_{is} in O(nlog σ) time and O(nlogσ) bits of working space. Combined with our reduction, we obtain the first efficient algorithm to build the LCP array of an arbitrary labeled graph. An implementation of our algorithm is publicly available at https://github.com/regindex/Labeled-Graph-LCP.
Cite as

Jarno N. Alanko, Davide Cenzato, Nicola Cotumaccio, Sung-Hwan Kim, Giovanni Manzini, and Nicola Prezza. Computing the LCP Array of a Labeled Graph. In 35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 296, pp. 1:1-1:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{alanko_et_al:LIPIcs.CPM.2024.1,
  author =	{Alanko, Jarno N. and Cenzato, Davide and Cotumaccio, Nicola and Kim, Sung-Hwan and Manzini, Giovanni and Prezza, Nicola},
  title =	{{Computing the LCP Array of a Labeled Graph}},
  booktitle =	{35th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching (CPM 2024)},
  pages =	{1:1--1:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-326-3},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{296},
  editor =	{Inenaga, Shunsuke and Puglisi, Simon J.},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2024.1},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-201113},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.CPM.2024.1},
  annote =	{Keywords: LCP array, Wheeler automata, prefix sorting, pattern matching, sorting}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2024.26
A Myhill-Nerode Theorem for Generalized Automata, with Applications to Pattern Matching and Compression

Authors: Nicola Cotumaccio

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 289, 41st International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2024)

Abstract
The model of generalized automata, introduced by Eilenberg in 1974, allows representing a regular language more concisely than conventional automata by allowing edges to be labeled not only with characters, but also strings. Giammaresi and Montalbano introduced a notion of determinism for generalized automata [STACS 1995]. While generalized deterministic automata retain many properties of conventional deterministic automata, the uniqueness of a minimal generalized deterministic automaton is lost. In the first part of the paper, we show that the lack of uniqueness can be explained by introducing a set 𝒲(𝒜) associated with a generalized automaton 𝒜. The set 𝒲(𝒜) is always trivially equal to the set of all prefixes of the language recognized by the automaton, if 𝒜 is a conventional automaton, but this need not be true for generalized automata. By fixing 𝒲(𝒜), we are able to derive for the first time a full Myhill-Nerode theorem for generalized automata, which contains the textbook Myhill-Nerode theorem for conventional automata as a degenerate case. In the second part of the paper, we show that the set 𝒲(𝒜) leads to applications for pattern matching and data compression. Wheeler automata [TCS 2017, SODA 2020] are a popular class of automata that can be compactly stored using e log σ (1 + o(1)) + O(e) bits (e being the number of edges, σ being the size of the alphabet) in such a way that pattern matching queries can be solved in Õ(m) time (m being the length of the pattern). In the paper, we show how to extend these results to generalized automata. More precisely, a Wheeler generalized automata can be stored using 𝔢 log σ (1 + o(1)) + O(e + rn) bits so that pattern matching queries can be solved in Õ(rm) time, where 𝔢 is the total length of all edge labels, r is the maximum length of an edge label and n is the number of states.
Cite as

Nicola Cotumaccio. A Myhill-Nerode Theorem for Generalized Automata, with Applications to Pattern Matching and Compression. In 41st International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2024). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 289, pp. 26:1-26:19, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2024)

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@InProceedings{cotumaccio:LIPIcs.STACS.2024.26,
  author =	{Cotumaccio, Nicola},
  title =	{{A Myhill-Nerode Theorem for Generalized Automata, with Applications to Pattern Matching and Compression}},
  booktitle =	{41st International Symposium on Theoretical Aspects of Computer Science (STACS 2024)},
  pages =	{26:1--26:19},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-311-9},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2024},
  volume =	{289},
  editor =	{Beyersdorff, Olaf and Kant\'{e}, Mamadou Moustapha and Kupferman, Orna and Lokshtanov, Daniel},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2024.26},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-197369},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.STACS.2024.26},
  annote =	{Keywords: Generalized Automata, Myhill-Nerode Theorem, Regular Languages, Wheeler Graphs, FM-index, Burrows-Wheeler Transform}
}
Document
DOI: 10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.22
Prefix Sorting DFAs: A Recursive Algorithm

Authors: Nicola Cotumaccio

Published in: LIPIcs, Volume 283, 34th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2023)

Abstract
In the past thirty years, numerous algorithms for building the suffix array of a string have been proposed. In 2021, the notion of suffix array was extended from strings to DFAs, and it was shown that the resulting data structure can be built in O(m² + n^{5/2}) time, where n is the number of states and m is the number of edges [SODA 2021]. Recently, algorithms running in O(mn) and O(n²log n) time have been described [CPM 2023]. In this paper, we improve the previous bounds by proposing an O(n²) recursive algorithm inspired by Farach’s algorithm for building a suffix tree [FOCS 1997]. To this end, we provide insight into the rich lexicographic and combinatorial structure of a graph, so contributing to the fascinating journey which might lead to solve the long-standing open problem of building the suffix tree of a graph.
Cite as

Nicola Cotumaccio. Prefix Sorting DFAs: A Recursive Algorithm. In 34th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2023). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 283, pp. 22:1-22:15, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2023)

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@InProceedings{cotumaccio:LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.22,
  author =	{Cotumaccio, Nicola},
  title =	{{Prefix Sorting DFAs: A Recursive Algorithm}},
  booktitle =	{34th International Symposium on Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2023)},
  pages =	{22:1--22:15},
  series =	{Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs)},
  ISBN =	{978-3-95977-289-1},
  ISSN =	{1868-8969},
  year =	{2023},
  volume =	{283},
  editor =	{Iwata, Satoru and Kakimura, Naonori},
  publisher =	{Schloss Dagstuhl -- Leibniz-Zentrum f{\"u}r Informatik},
  address =	{Dagstuhl, Germany},
  URL =		{https://drops.dagstuhl.de/entities/document/10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.22},
  URN =		{urn:nbn:de:0030-drops-193242},
  doi =		{10.4230/LIPIcs.ISAAC.2023.22},
  annote =	{Keywords: Suffix Array, Burrows-Wheeler Transform, FM-index, Recursive Algorithms, Graph Theory, Pattern Matching}
}
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