Combined super-/substring and super-/subsequence problems

Middendorf, M. and Manlove, D.F. (2004) Combined super-/substring and super-/subsequence problems. Theoretical Computer Science, 320(2-3), pp. 247-267. (doi: 10.1016/j.tcs.2004.02.001)

Abstract

Super-/substring problems and super-/subsequence problems are well-known problems in stringology that have applications in a variety of areas, such as manufacturing systems design and molecular biology. Here we investigate the complexity of a new type of such problem that forms a combination of a super-/substring and a super-/subsequence problem. Moreover we introduce different types of minimal superstring and maximal substring problems. In particular, we consider the following problems: given a set L of strings and a string S, (i) find a minimal superstring (or maximal substring) of L that is also a supersequence (or a subsequence) of S, (ii) find a minimal supersequence (or maximal subsequence) of L that is also a superstring (or a substring) of S. In addition some non-super-/non-substring and non-super-/non-subsequence variants are studied. We obtain several NP-hardness or even MAX SNP-hardness results and also identify types of "weak minimal" superstrings and "weak maximal" substrings for which (i) is polynomial-time solvable.

• Item Type: Articles
• Additional Information: Postprint provided by the author.
• Status: Published
• Refereed: Yes
• Glasgow Author(s) Enlighten ID: Manlove, Professor David
• Authors: Middendorf, M., and Manlove, D.F.
• Subjects: Q Science > QA Mathematics > QA75 Electronic computers. Computer science
• College/School: College of Science and Engineering > School of Computing Science
• Journal Name: Theoretical Computer Science
• Publisher: Elsevier
• ISSN: 0304-3975
• Copyright Holders: ©2004 Elsevier B.V.
• First Published: First published in Theoretical Computer Science 320(2-3):247-267
• Publisher Policy: Reproduced in accordance with the copyright policy of the publisher.