The research and development of pattern recognition have proven to be of importance in science, technology, and human activity. Many useful concepts and tools from different disciplines have been employed in pattern recognition. Among them is string matching, which receives much theoretical and practical attention. String matching is also an important topic in combinatorial optimization. This book is devoted to recent advances in pattern recognition and string matching. It consists of twenty eight chapters written by different authors, addressing a broad range of topics such as those from...