A simple test for the consecutive ones property

Abstract

A (0,1)-matrix satisfies the consecutive ones property if there exists a column permutation such that the one's in each row of the resulting matrix are consecutive. Booth and Lueker [1976] designed a linear time testing algorithm for this property based on a data structure called “PQ-trees”. This procedure is very complicated and the linear time amortized analysis is also rather involved. We develop an off-line testing algorithm for the consecutive ones property without using PQ-trees. Our approach is based on a decomposition technique which separates the rows into “prime” subsets which admit unique column orderings that realize the consecutive ones property. The success of this approach is based on finding a good “row ordering” to be tested iteratively.