Constructing the Suffix Tree of a Tree with a Large Alphabet

Abstract

The problem of constructing the suffix tree of a tree is a generalization of the problem of constructing the suffix tree of a string. It has many applications, such as in minimizing the size of sequential transducers and in tree pattern matching. The best-known algorithm for this problem is Breslauer's O(n log |Σ|) time algorithm where n is the size of the CS-tree and |Σ| is the alphabet size, which requires O(n log n) time if |Σ| is large. We improve this bound by giving an optimal linear time algorithm for integer alphabets. We also describe a new data structure, the Bsuffix tree, which enables efficient query for patterns of completely balanced k-ary trees from a k-ary tree or forest. We also propose an optimal O(n) algorithm for constructing the Bsurffix tree for integer alphabets.