Introduction to Pattern Matching Using Tries
Understand how tries facilitate pattern matching by storing multiple patterns for quick retrieval within larger texts. Learn to apply trie-based methods for exact and partial matches, analyze their time and space complexities, and explore suffix and compressed suffix tries to optimize storage and search performance. This lesson helps you identify trie-appropriate problems and apply efficient pattern-matching techniques.
Pattern matching
In strings, pattern matching means checking the presence of a given sequence of characters called a pattern in a more extensive series of letters or characters, which we call text.
Some examples of the problems associated with pattern matching include finding exact matches, partial matches, both exact and partial matches—as well as just the first match and the position of each match within the text.
Brute-force approach
Let's look at an example to understand a simple pattern-matching problem.
The picture above shows that the pattern PA occurs three times in the text. In the above scenario, we use a sliding window and move the pattern string through the text one character at a time and look for a match.
Complexity analysis
Let's assume that the length of the pattern is