On the weak prefix-search problem
The weak-prefix search problem consists of searching for the strings in a dictionary s that are prefixed by a pattern P[1, p]; if no such string does occur, any answer can be returned. Strings in s have average length l, are n in number, and are given in advance to be preprocessed, whereas the pattern P is provided on-line. In this paper we solve this problem in the external-memory and in the cache-oblivious models by using the optimal O(n log l) bits of space and requiring O(p/B+ log(B) n) I/Os. The searching algorithm is of Monte Carlo type, so its answer is correct with high probability. We also discuss some variants of the problem concerning with a distribution over the queried patterns, a deterministic solution, and foresee applications in the design of energy-efficient data structures. (C) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.
energy-efficient data structures prefix search compressed indexes for string dictionaries weighted data structures