A Very Fast String Matching Algorithm Based on Condensed Alphabets

Abstract

String matching is the problem of finding all the substrings of a text which correspond to a given pattern. It’s one of the most investigated problem in computer science, mainly due to its various applications in many fields. In recent years most solutions to the problem focused on efficiency and flexibility of the searching procedure and effective techniques appeared to speed-up previous solutions. In this paper we present a simple and very efficient algorithm for string matching. It can be seen as an extension of the Skip-Search algorithm to condensed alphabets with the aim of reducing the number of verifications during the searching phase. From our experimental results it turns out that the new variant obtains in most cases the best running time when compared against the most effective algorithms in literature. This makes the new algorithm one of the most flexible solutions in practical cases.