String searching is a subject of both theoretical and practical interest in computer science. This book presents a bibliographic overview of the field and an anthology of detailed descriptions of the principal algorithms available. The aim is twofold: on the one hand, to provide an easy-to-read comparison of the available techniques in each area, and on the other, to furnish the reader with a reference of in-depth descriptions of the major algorithms. Topics covered include methods for finding exact and approximate string matches, calculating "edit" distances between strings, finding common...