Space-Efficient Online Computation of String Net Occurrences

TL;DR

This paper introduces space-efficient online algorithms for reporting extended net occurrences of repeats in strings, improving on previous methods by reducing space and maintaining optimal reporting time.

Contribution

The authors propose two novel space-efficient online algorithms for detecting extended net occurrences, one using a sliding window and the other based on CDAWG, both with optimal reporting time.

Findings

The sliding-window algorithm reports extended net occurrences in optimal time with O(d) space.

The CDAWG-based algorithm reports in optimal time with O(e) space, where e is the number of edges in the CDAWG.

All algorithms operate in O(n log σ) time for online string processing.

Abstract

A substring $u$ of a string $T$ is said to be a repeat if $u$ occurs at least twice in $T$. An occurrence $[i..j]$ of a repeat $u$ in $T$ is said to be a net occurrence if each of the substrings $aub = T[i-1..j+1]$, $au = T[i-1..j+1]$, and $ub = T[i..j+1]$ occurs exactly once in $T$. The occurrence $[i-1..j+1]$ of $aub$ is said to be an extended net occurrence of $u$. Let $T$ be an input string of length $n$ over an alphabet of size $\sigma$, and let $\mathsf{ENO}(T)$ denote the set of extended net occurrences of repeats in $T$. Guo et al. [SPIRE 2024] presented an online algorithm which can report $\mathsf{ENO}(T[1..i])$ in $T[1..i]$ in $O(n\sigma^2)$ time, for each prefix $T[1..i]$ of $T$. Very recently, Inenaga [arXiv 2024] gave a faster online algorithm that can report $\mathsf{ENO}(T[1..i])$ in optimal $O(\#\mathsf{ENO}(T[1..i]))$ time for each prefix $T[1..i]$ of $T$, where $\#S$ denotes the cardinality of a set $S$. Both of the aforementioned data structures can be maintained in $O(n \log \sigma)$ time and occupy $O(n)$ space, where the $O(n)$-space requirement comes from the suffix tree data structure. In this paper, we propose the two following space-efficient alternatives: (1) A sliding-window algorithm of $O(d)$ working space that can report $\mathsf{ENO}(T[i-d+1..i])$ in optimal $O(\#\mathsf{ENO}(T[i-d+1..i]))$ time for each sliding window $T[i-d+1..i]$ of size $d$ in $T$. (2) A CDAWG-based online algorithm of $O(e)$ working space that can report $\mathsf{ENO}(T[1..i])$ in optimal $O(\#\mathsf{ENO}(T[1..i]))$ time for each prefix $T[1..i]$ of $T$, where $e < 2n$ is the number of edges in the CDAWG for $T$. All of our proposed data structures can be maintained in $O(n \log \sigma)$ time for the input online string $T$. We also discuss that the extended net occurrences of repeats in $T$ can be fully characterized in terms of the minimal unique substrings (MUSs) in $T$.