Near-real-time Solutions for Online String Problems

Abstract: Based on the Breslauer-Italiano online suffix tree construction algorithm (2013) with double logarithmic worst-case guarantees on the update time per letter, we develop near-real-time algorithms for several classical problems on strings, including the computation of the longest repeating suffix array, the (reversed) Lempel-Ziv 77 factorization, and the maintenance of minimal unique substrings, all in an online manner. Our solutions improve over the best known running times for these problems in terms of the worst-case time per letter, for which we achieve a poly-log-logarithmic time complexity, within a linear space. Best known results for these problems require a poly-logarithmic time complexity per letter or only provide amortized complexity bounds. As a result of independent interest, we give conversions between the longest previous factor array and the longest repeating suffix array in space and time bounds based on their irreducible representations, which can have sizes sublinear in the length of the input string.