String-searching algorithm

A procedure for locating occurrences of a pattern within a larger string. Algorithms differ in how they compare characters, preprocess the pattern, and handle repeated matches.

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Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm: A string-searching algorithm that uses a prefix table to avoid rechecking matched characters after a mismatch. Its failure function lets the search resume without moving the text index backward.
String: A finite sequence of symbols drawn from an alphabet. A search instance consists of a text string and a pattern string.
Regular expression: A formal pattern notation that describes sets of strings and can be compiled into matching procedures. Regex engines use string-matching techniques alongside automata and backtracking.
Approximate string matching: The task of finding strings that resemble a pattern under a defined error or distance measure. It permits substitutions, insertions, or deletions rather than requiring exact equality.
Donald Knuth: An American computer scientist known for foundational work on algorithms and the analysis of programs. Knuth co-developed the Knuth–Morris–Pratt algorithm with Vaughan Pratt and James H. Morris.
Boyer–Moore string-search algorithm: A string-searching algorithm that compares from right to left and uses mismatch-based shifts to skip text positions. Its bad-character and good-suffix rules can advance farther than one character per mismatch.
Substring: A contiguous sequence of symbols within a string. A pattern occurrence is a substring of the text equal to the pattern.
Text editor: A program for creating and modifying text documents. Find commands use pattern-search algorithms to locate text within a document.
Longest common substring problem: The problem of finding the longest contiguous sequence shared by two or more strings. It compares strings to discover a shared region instead of locating one supplied pattern.
Vaughan Pratt: An American computer scientist whose work includes formal language theory and string algorithms. Pratt co-developed the linear-time Knuth–Morris–Pratt search method.