Questions tagged [strings]

Questions about sequences of symbols, sets thereof and their properties as well as uses.

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3 votes
4 answers
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Is there an elegant algorithm for applying multiple simultaneous search-and-replace operations to a string?

The operation I'm interested in is a slight twist on your standard search-and-replace operation, in that instead of a single pair of arguments (replaceme and ...
1 vote
1 answer
62 views

Reconstructing a string from two its partitions into substrings of varying size

Given two unordered partitions of the same string over a finite alphabet into substrings, how hard is it to reconstruct the original string? If multiple solutions exist, any one will suffice. Under an ...
0 votes
1 answer
42 views

ASCII invariant string for base64 Encoding

I know the basics about base64 encoding, but thinking about it abstractly I have a theoretical question. If we consider base64 a mathematical function(in our case computable), Does there exists an ...
0 votes
0 answers
18 views

Performing fuzzy search queries on a large database of strings

I have a large database of strings (~10 million) I need to perform fuzzy search queries which would find the best match inside that database. The best match meaning the one that has the highest 'score'...
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1 vote
0 answers
38 views

Is there a faster alternative to Aho-Corasick when searching for any occurrence rather than all occurrences of each of the substrings?

Aho-Corasick can result in a quadratic number of matches because it finds all occurrences of each searched-for substring. What is a faster algorithm or modification to this one to simply determine if ...
1 vote
1 answer
131 views

Longest prefix of string S that is also a sub-prefix of S in linear time

As the question suggest. I want an algorithm that runs in linear time which finds the longest prefix of a substring that is a sub-prefix of the same string. Formally: Given a string $S$ of length $n$,...
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3 votes
1 answer
65 views

A Markov algorithm that does unary multiplication

I am learning Markov algorithms and came across the paper Markov Algorithm by CHEN Yuanmi. I am trying to understand the following example (well, any of the examples in the paper). Example 3: ...
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-1 votes
1 answer
51 views

Correct way to encode strings

I'm interested in analyzing the randomness of strings using relative count for 1-, 2-, etc tuples. E.g. for a long string "abbccba.." with an alphabet <...
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2 votes
1 answer
712 views

Can we prove that any set of finite strings without substrings is finite?

I want to prove (or disprove) the following conjecture: Let $\Sigma$ be a finite alphabet, and let $L \subseteq \Sigma^*$ satisfy that there are no $v, w \in L$ such that $v$ is a proper substring of ...
0 votes
0 answers
45 views

what are all the ways of delimiting blocks

To my knowledge, in block-structured programming languages, there are 2, maybe 3 main ways of delimiting a block. Using start and end tokens, this can be brackets or reserved words etc Using ...
1 vote
0 answers
14 views

DC3/Skew Suffix Array Algorithm doesn't work for specific cases

When applying the DC3/Skew algorithm to the string yabadabado, I can't quite get it to sort correctly. This issue happens in other cases, but this is a short example to show it. This first table is ...
2 votes
2 answers
589 views

Count number of non-contiguous occurrences in string

Given strings $S,T$ such that $n=|T|>|S|$ , I'd like an algorithm to count number of occurrences of $S$ in $T$ (as a subsequence), not necessarily contiguous. Example: if $T=aababc, S=abc$, the ...
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2 votes
3 answers
72 views

Best Data Structure For Text Processing

Given a sentence like this, and i have the data structure (dictionary of lists): {'cat': ['feline', 'kitten']} A feline was recently spotted in the ...
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3 votes
1 answer
77 views

The smallest periods of the prefixes of the Fibonacci word

I'll start with some definitions to simplify the rest of the message. Let's denote $f_0 = b, \ f_1 = a, \ f_n = f_{n-1} \cdot f_{n-2}$, where $\cdot$ stands for concatenation of two words. We call $...
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0 votes
1 answer
45 views

Number of bit string interpretations correct?

Suppose you are given a bit string $B[1 ... n]$. Now, suppose that some bits are just padding bits conveying no information, the rest of the bits may be permuted and some meaningful (that is, non-...
0 votes
0 answers
10 views

How can we disallow alternating back-and-forth which character is matched to the gap character?

When aligning two strings, how can we disallow consecutive matches to the gap character? Introduction It is sometimes the case that we will want to align two pieces of English-text. Example 1A $x = $...
1 vote
0 answers
40 views

Understanding how the total # of comparisons is derived for the worst case in the "Brute-Force String Matching" algorithm

The Total number of comparisons for the worst case in the "Brute-Force String Matching" algorithm is: (n-m+1) where ...
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1 vote
1 answer
111 views

Failure function of the Fibonacci strings (The Dragon Book Exercise 3.4.9d)

Exercise 3.4.9 of The Dragon Book defines Fibonacci strings as follows: $s_1 = b$. $s_2 = a$. $s_k = s_{k-1}s_{k-2}$ for $k>2$. Part (d) then poses the following question: Show that the failure ...
2 votes
2 answers
140 views

How can we show that P is not closed under taking all long prefixes?

Let P be the complexity class of languages decidable by Turing machines running in polynomial time. Say a prefix $s$ of a string $x$ is a long prefix (or an L prefix) if $|s|\ge |x|/2$. For a language ...
1 vote
1 answer
364 views

time complexity to convert string to integer and vice a versa

just given solution on this post i had mention the time complexity to convert string to int is O(n), also verifying this post now in one of comment fellow SO user, corrected me with example also ...
0 votes
2 answers
53 views

Is solving Binary String Matching equivalent to Solving All type of string matching?

This might be an irritating, naive question, but please bear with me. If an algorithm/code solves the string matching problem for a binary string, does not it imply that the algo/code actually solves ...
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1 vote
2 answers
59 views

Show that the Hamming distance of $wx$ and $xw$ cannot be 1

Let $w$ and $x$ be two binary strings. Show that the Hamming distance of $wx$ and $xw$ cannot be 1. I think one approach is a proof by contradiction. I was thinking of explicitly writing out $w = w_1\...
0 votes
1 answer
146 views

Time Complexity for the given algorithm

Recently, I had to implement the following algorithm (similarly). Code in Kotlin: ...
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1 vote
0 answers
24 views

What are practical applications for markovs algorithm(string rewriting systems)

:) Currently I am browsing through the internet on the hunt for a topic for my bachelors thesis. Whilst being on Reddit I discovered an interesting repo (https://github.com/mxgmn/MarkovJunior) for a ...
0 votes
1 answer
83 views

Given a list of strings enumerated over a finite alphabet, what's the most efficient way to get a string by its index?

Say you have the finite alphabet $\{a,b,c,d,e,f,g\}$ and an enumeration of finite strings over it by the shortlex order (length-lexicographic ordering), starting with the empty string, i.e., $\epsilon,...
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1 vote
1 answer
41 views

Determine if string can be constructed from given building blocks

Let's say building blocks are X, Y, XX, YY, XY and YX. Each building block has an associated count ($c_X, c_Y, c_{XX}, \ldots$, $c_i$ can be 0). Given a string $s$ and building block counts, figure ...
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1 vote
1 answer
33 views

Find a string between two groups A,B that have an amount of smaller strings in A as it has larger strings in B

I've been given the question in the title: Create a data structure that can insert a string S in O(|S|), string may belong to group A or B (or both). The structure should be able to return a string in ...
2 votes
2 answers
50 views

Delete consecutive characters and add zeros at the end with a restriction

Given an array of characters, I need to delete all the characters that got repeated 3 or more times (consecutively) and add '0' at the end of the array for every deleted character, The restrictions: $...
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0 votes
1 answer
132 views

Is it faster to use Counting Sort to lexicographically sort characters in a word in Python?

Assuming I have very long words, is it worth it to use Counting Sort with its memory overhead to achieve linear time complexity? I wrote a Python function that sorts the characters in a given string ...
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1 vote
1 answer
223 views

Hash / Compression algorithm to shorten text?

I desperately need a hash / compression function that is suited to shorten text. The context is this: I want to bring order and sort my box with hundreds of charging adapters (duh). After I determined ...
2 votes
1 answer
40 views

Check if a string can be obtained by a sequences of insertion of "abc"

Let $a$ initially be an empty string. One can transform $a$ into $b$ in the following way: $a$ becomes $a_{left}+$"$abc$"$+a_{right}$, where $a=a_{left}+a_{right}$ in a prior state. $a_{left}...
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1 vote
4 answers
1k views

What is the name of the following binary encoding?

S is a the set of binary strings in Shortlex order: [0,1,00,01,10,11,...] I want to encode / decode natural numbers with the following scheme: Encoding N: For ...
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6 votes
1 answer
96 views

What properties must a string satisfy to be a possible output of the Burrows-Wheeler transform?

The Buttows-Wheeler transform is a function that takes a string $S$ to a new string $S'$ and an index $I$. The new string $S'$ is always an anagram (rearrangement) of the input string $S$. However, if ...
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1 vote
0 answers
26 views

What is the name of the following problem on sets of strings

Given finite sets $A,B,C$ of finite strings, does there exist some $x,y \in A$ and some $z$ such that $x.z \in B$ and $y.z \in C$ hold (where $x.z$ denotes the concatenation of $x$ and $z$)? That is, ...
0 votes
2 answers
281 views

Does creating a deep copy of a string of size N (in python) take space complexity O(N) or O(1)?

My question comes from solving this LeetCode question, in which we are given a string of characters with size N, and one of the solutions is to use a hashmap (dictionary in Python) to count the ...
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1 vote
2 answers
62 views

Polynomial algorithm for the «Input Series» Problem

Can you help me design an algorithm to solve the following problem in polynomial time? Let n be a given natural number. We define an input series of length n to be a string of length n which is built ...
0 votes
0 answers
9 views

Text macros(replacements) based on pre-defined rules

I'm writing a web app that requires a component that let's the user input a piece of text thats automatically formatted based on something the client calls "macros". These macros have a very ...
6 votes
1 answer
118 views

Find all n bit numbers with k ones and unique under circular shift

I am trying to traverse through all uint64_t with k 1s. Then I find that if x and y are circular shifts of each other, they will output the same result. So I'm trying to optimize my code. The problem ...
0 votes
0 answers
26 views

If string x is conjugate to string y, how can you prove that the reverse of x is conjugate to the reverse of y?

I am relatively new to writing proofs and I am stuck trying to prove that if $x$ ~ $y$, then $x^R$ ~ $y^R$. Any help would be appreciated!
1 vote
1 answer
61 views

Quicksort for Strings

I am currently trying to study the Quicksort algorithm. I understand how it works for integers but can anyone explain how does Quicksort algorithm work with strings? The reason for my confusion is ...
1 vote
2 answers
161 views

Prove my algorithm that solves ABC String problem in Codeforces is correct

Here's the statements of problem A, "ABC String" in Educational Codeforces Round 105 (Rated for Div. 2) You are given a string a, consisting of n characters, n is even. For each i from 1 to ...
0 votes
1 answer
91 views

Empty string in an ambiguous grammar?

I'm a bit confused by the role of the empty string in this ambiguous grammar: A' -> A A -> if A B A -> null B -> [empty string] B -> else S So what ...
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1 vote
0 answers
47 views

Check if string contains pattern (with respect to one-to-one symbols mapping) [closed]

I'm trying to solve following problem: Check, if the string contains substring, that can be obtained from pattern using one to one lower case symbols replacement (using bijection between original ...
-1 votes
1 answer
678 views

Dynamic programming to find number of ways to divide string into primes

I am studying for final algorithms exam and saw this question: Given a string of length n consisting of digits [0-9], count the number of ways the given string can be split into prime numbers >= 2....
0 votes
0 answers
33 views

An idempotent grammar for text decoding?

I'd like to create a function decode(x : string) such that decode(x : string) == decode(decode(x : string)). I believe I can ...
1 vote
0 answers
31 views

Longest substring creating palindromic substring in other string

Given two strings $s, t$, I would liketo find a maximal subsequence of $t$ (denoted as $t'$), such that the concatenation of $t'$ with its reverse ($t'_R$), is a palindromic substring of $s$. I ...
0 votes
0 answers
28 views

using TRIE for strings?

I saw the following question online: Init - Initlize data structure in O(1). Insert(s) - Add string s to your Data Structure in ...
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13 votes
5 answers
6k views

How does editing software (like Microsoft word or Gmail) pick the 2nd string to compare in Levenshtein distance?

I understand the textbook explanation of how to use dynamic programming to find the minimum edit distance between 2 strings but how do we get to pick the 2nd string? I don't think the entire ...
6 votes
1 answer
193 views

Counting number of swaps to make two strings equal in linear time

The input to our problem is a pair of strings, say $x$ and $y$. We treat our alphabet size as a constant, i.e., our input is effectively a pair of arrays with the values therein bounded by a constant. ...
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-1 votes
1 answer
147 views

Proving correctness for greedy algorithm in string removal problem

Problem Statement: You are given a string s and two integers x and y. You can perform two types of operations any number of times. Remove substring "ab" and gain x points. For example, when ...
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