Example
\(
\def\sa#1{\tt{#1}}
\def\A{A}
\def\varA{V}
\def\dd{\dot{}\dot{}}
\)
With $\A=\{\sa{a},\sa{b},\sa{c}\}$ and $\varA=\{t,u,v,w\}$,
$\sa{a}u\sa{b}v\sa{a}u\sa{b}$ and $\sa{a}w\sa{b}u\sa{a}w\sa{b}$ p-match by
mapping $u$ to $w$ and $v$ to $u$.
But $\sa{a}u\sa{b}v\sa{a}u\sa{b}$ and
$\sa{a}v\sa{b}w\sa{a}z\sa{b}$ do not p-match, since $u$ should be mapped to
both $v$ and $z$.
With $y=\sa{a}z\sa{b}u\sa{a}z\sa{b}z\sa{a}v\sa{b}w\sa{a}v\sa{b}$
the pattern
$x=\sa{a}u\sa{b}v\sa{a}u\sa{b}$ occurs at position $0$
by mapping $u$ to $z$ and $v$ to $u$ and at position $8$
by mapping $u$ to $v$ and $v$ to $w$.
Problem 32: Parameterised Matching
The problem considers a more general and more complex version of
Problem 30 where some symbols are unknown and some others are fixed
constant symbols.
Searching texts for a fixed pattern is rather restrictive
in some contexts, and parameterised string matching provides an efficient
solution in several applications by introducing variables in patterns.
The problem was initially stated to detect code duplicates in which, for example,
identifiers are substituted for the original names.
Let $\A$ and $\varA$ be two disjoint alphabets: $\A$ is the alphabet of
constant letters and $\varA$ is the alphabet of variable letters.
We assume that no alphabet contains integers.
A word over $\A\cup\varA$ is called a parameterised word or a p-word.
Two p-words $x$ and $y$ are said to
match or p-match if $x$ can be transformed into $y$ by applying a one-to-one
mapping on symbols of $\varA$ occurring in $x$.
The parameterised pattern matching problem can be stated as follows: given a
pattern $x\in (\A\cup\varA)^*$ and a text $y\in(\A\cup\varA)^*$ find all the
p-occurrences of $x$ in $y$, that is, find all the positions $j$ on $y$,
$0\le j \le |y|-|x|$, for which $x$ and $y[j \dd j+|x|-1]$ p-match.
Design an algorithm that solves the parameterised pattern matching problem
and runs in linear time for a fixed alphabet.
References
A. Amir, M. Farach, and S. Muthukrishnan. Alphabet dependence in
parameterized matching. Inf. Process. Lett., 49(3):111-115, 1994.
B. S. Baker. A theory of parameterized pattern matching: algorithms
and applications. In S. R. Kosaraju, D. S. Johnson, and A. Aggarwal,
editors, Proceedings of the Twenty-Fifth Annual ACM Symposium on
Theory of Computing, May 16-18, 1993, San Diego, CA, USA, pages
71-80. ACM, 1993.
B. S. Baker. Parameterized pattern matching: Algorithms and applications.
J. Comput. Syst. Sci., 52(1):28-42, 1996.
R. M. Idury and A. A. Schäffer. Multiple matching of parameterized
patterns. Theor. Comput. Sci., 154(2):203-224, 1996.
J. Mendivelso and Y. Pinzón. Parameterized matching: Solutions and
extensions. In J. Holub and J. Zdárek, editors, Proceedings of the Prague
Stringology Conference 2015, pages 118-131, Czech Technical University
in Prague, Czech Republic, 2015.
