On the complexity of the Extended String-to-String Correction Problem

  • Authors:
  • Robert A. Wagner

  • Affiliations:
  • -

  • Venue:
  • STOC '75 Proceedings of seventh annual ACM symposium on Theory of computing
  • Year:
  • 1975

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Abstract

The Extended String-to-String Correction Problem [ESSCP] is defined as the problem of determining, for given strings A and B over alphabet V, a minimum-cost sequence S of edit operations such that S(A) &equil; B. The sequence S may make use of the operations: Change, Insert, Delete and Swaps, each of constant cost WC, WI, WD, and WS respectively. Swap permits any pair of adjacent characters to be interchanged. The principal results of this paper are: (1) a brief presentation of an algorithm (the CELLAR algorithm) which solves ESSCP in time Ø(¦A¦* ¦B¦* ¦V¦s*s), where s &equil; min(4WC, WI+WD)/WS + 1; (2) presentation of polynomial time algorithms for the cases (a) WS &equil; 0, (b) WS 0, WC&equil; WI&equil; WD&equil; @@@@; (3) proof that ESSCP, with WI C &equil; WD &equil; @@@@, 0 S S&equil; @@@@, reduces ESSCP to the string-to-string correction problem of [1], where an Ø( ¦A¦* ¦B¦) algorithm is given.) Thus, “almost all” ESSCP's can be solved in deterministic polynomial time, but the general problem is NP-complete.