Parallel String Matching with Variable Length Don′t Cares

Abstract

String matching is the problem of finding all the occurrences of a pattern P in a text T, where P and T are strings over a finite alphabet Σ. A variable length don′t care is a special character, not belonging to Σ, which can match any string in Σ*. The string-matching problem with variable length don′t cares is an extension of the classical string-matching problem in which the pattern P may contain an arbitrary number of don′t cares. An efficient parallel algorithm is given for solving the string-matching problem with variable length don′t cares. The EREW PRAM model of parallel computer with scan operations is used to obtain an O(log n) running time using O( mn/log n) processors, where m and n are, respectively, the lengths of P and T. The proposed parallel algorithm has an Ω(1/log n) processor utilization, since the fastest serial algorithm known so far has an O( mn/log n) running time.