Let a text $T[1..n]$ be the only string generated by a context-free grammar with $g$ (terminal and nonterminal) symbols, and of size $G$ (measured as the sum of the lengths of the right-hand sides of the rules). Such a grammar, called a grammar-compressed representation of $T$, can be encoded using essentially $G\lg g$ bits. We introduce the first grammar-compressed index that uses $O(G\lg n)$ bits and can find the $occ$ occurrences of patterns $P[1..m]$ in time $O((m^2+occ)\lg G)$. We implement the index and demonstrate its practicality in comparison with the state of the art, on highly repetitive text collections.
Cadences are structurally maximal arithmetic progressions of indices corresponding to equal characters in an underlying string. This paper provides a polynomial time detection algorithm for 3-cadences in grammar-compressed binary strings. This algorithm also translates to a linear time detection algorithm for 3-cadences in uncompressed binary strings. Furthermore, this paper proves that several variants of the cadence detection problem are NP-complete for grammar-compressed strings. As a consequence, the equidistant subsequence matching problem with patterns of length three is NP-complete for …
A grammar-compressed ranked tree is represented with a linear space overhead so that a single traversal step, i.e., the move to the parent or the i-th child, can be carried out in constant time. Moreover, we extend our data structure such that equality of subtrees can be checked in constant time.
Although several grammar-based self-indexes have been proposed thus far, their applicability is limited to offline settings where whole input texts are prepared, thus requiring to rebuild index structures for given additional inputs, which is often the case in the big data era. In this paper, we present the first online self-indexed grammar compression named OESP-index that can gradually build the index structure by reading input characters one-by-one. Such a property is another advantage which enables saving a working space for construction, because we do not need to store input texts in memo…
We introduce the first grammar-compressed representation of a sequence that supports searches in time that depends only logarithmically on the size of the grammar. Given a text $T[1..u]$ that is represented by a (context-free) grammar of $n$ (terminal and nonterminal) symbols and size $N$ (measured as the sum of the lengths of the right hands of the rules), a basic grammar-based representation of $T$ takes $N\lg n$ bits of space. Our representation requires $2N\lg n + N\lg u + ε\, n\lg n + o(N\lg n)$ bits of space, for any $0<ε\le 1$. It can find the positions of the $occ$ occurrences of a pat…
We show how, given a straight-line program with $g$ rules for a binary string $B$ of length $n$, in $O(g^{2 / 3} n^{4 / 3})$ time we can build a linear-space index such that, given $m$ and $c$, in O(1) time we can determine whether there is a substring of $B$ with length $m$ containing exactly $c$ copies of 1. If we use $O(n \log n)$ space for the index, then we can list all such substrings using $O(m)$ time per substring.
The random access problem for compressed strings is to build a data structure that efficiently supports accessing the character in position $i$ of a string given in compressed form. Given a grammar of size $n$ compressing a string of size $N$, we present a data structure using $O(nΔ\log_Δ\frac N n \log N)$ bits of space that supports accessing position $i$ in $O(\log_ΔN)$ time for $Δ\leq \log^{O(1)} N$. The query time is optimal for polynomially compressible strings, i.e., when $n=O(N^{1-ε})$.
We present an algorithm for computing the Lyndon factorization of a string that is given in grammar compressed form, namely, a Straight Line Program (SLP). The algorithm runs in $O(n^4 + mn^3h)$ time and $O(n^2)$ space, where $m$ is the size of the Lyndon factorization, $n$ is the size of the SLP, and $h$ is the height of the derivation tree of the SLP. Since the length of the decompressed string can be exponentially large w.r.t. $n, m$ and $h$, our result is the first polynomial time solution when the string is given as SLP.
Sequence representations supporting not only direct access to their symbols, but also rank/select operations, are a fundamental building block in many compressed data structures. Several recent applications need to represent highly repetitive sequences, and classical statistical compression proves ineffective. We introduce, instead, grammar-based representations for repetitive sequences, which use up to 6% of the space needed by statistically compressed representations, and support direct access and rank/select operations within tens of microseconds. We demonstrate the impact of our structures…
We present a pointer-based data structure for constant time traversal of the edges of an edge-labeled (alphabet $Σ$) directed hypergraph (a graph where edges can be incident to more than two vertices, and the incident vertices are ordered) given as hyperedge-replacement grammar $G$. It is assumed that the grammar has a fixed rank $κ$ (maximal number of vertices connected to a nonterminal hyperedge) and that each vertex of the represented graph is incident to at most one $σ$-edge per direction ($σ\in Σ$). Precomputing the data structure needs $O(|G||Σ|κr h)$ space and $O(|G||Σ|κrh^2)$ time, whe…
Grammar based compression, where one replaces a long string by a small context-free grammar that generates the string, is a simple and powerful paradigm that captures many popular compression schemes. In this paper, we present a novel grammar representation that allows efficient random access to any character or substring without decompressing the string. Let $S$ be a string of length $N$ compressed into a context-free grammar $\mathcal{S}$ of size $n$. We present two representations of $\mathcal{S}$ achieving $O(\log N)$ random access time, and either $O(n\cdot α_k(n))$ construction time and …
With massive high-dimensional data now commonplace in research and industry, there is a strong and growing demand for more scalable computational techniques for data analysis and knowledge discovery. Key to turning these data into knowledge is the ability to learn statistical models with high interpretability. Current methods for learning statistical models either produce models that are not interpretable or have prohibitive computational costs when applied to massive data. In this paper we address this need by presenting a scalable algorithm for partial least squares regression (PLS), which w…
We present a compressed data structure to store free trajectories of moving objects (ships over the sea, for example) allowing spatio-temporal queries. Our method, GraCT, uses a $k^2$-tree to store the absolute positions of all objects at regular time intervals (snapshots), whereas the positions between snapshots are represented as logs of relative movements compressed with Re-Pair. Our experimental evaluation shows important savings in space and time with respect to a fair baseline.
We investigate two closely related LZ78-based compression schemes: LZMW (an old scheme by Miller and Wegman) and LZD (a recent variant by Goto et al.). Both LZD and LZMW naturally produce a grammar for a string of length $n$; we show that the size of this grammar can be larger than the size of the smallest grammar by a factor $Ω(n^{\frac{1}3})$ but is always within a factor $O((\frac{n}{\log n})^{\frac{2}{3}})$. In addition, we show that the standard algorithms using $Θ(z)$ working space to construct the LZD and LZMW parsings, where $z$ is the size of the parsing, work in $Ω(n^{\frac{5}4})$ ti…
We introduce a new class of straight-line programs (SLPs), named the Lyndon SLP, inspired by the Lyndon trees (Barcelo, 1990). Based on this SLP, we propose a self-index data structure of $O(g)$ words of space that can be built from a string $T$ in $O(n \lg n)$ expected time, retrieving the starting positions of all occurrences of a pattern $P$ of length $m$ in $O(m + \lg m \lg n + occ \lg g)$ time, where $n$ is the length of $T$, $g$ is the size of the Lyndon SLP for $T$, and $occ$ is the number of occurrences of $P$ in $T$.
Like [1], we present an algorithm to compute the simulation of a query pattern in a graph of labeled nodes and unlabeled edges. However, our algorithm works on a compressed graph grammar, instead of on the original graph. The speed-up of our algorithm compared to the algorithm in [1] grows with the size of the graph and with the compression strength.
The run-length compressed Burrows-Wheeler transform (RLBWT) used in conjunction with the backward search introduced in the FM index is the centerpiece of most compressed indexes working on highly-repetitive data sets like biological sequences. Compared to grammar indexes, the size of the RLBWT is often much bigger, but queries like counting the occurrences of long patterns can be done much faster than on any existing grammar index so far. In this paper, we combine the virtues of a grammar with the RLBWT by building the RLBWT on top of a special grammar based on induced suffix sorting. Our expe…
The most fundamental problem considered in algorithms for text processing is pattern matching: given a pattern $p$ of length $m$ and a text $t$ of length $n$, does $p$ occur in $t$? Multiple versions of this basic question have been considered, and by now we know algorithms that are fast both in practice and in theory. However, the rapid increase in the amount of generated and stored data brings the need of designing algorithms that operate directly on compressed representations of data. In the compressed pattern matching problem we are given a compressed representation of the text, with $n$ b…
The compressed indexing problem is to preprocess a string $S$ of length $n$ into a compressed representation that supports pattern matching queries. That is, given a string $P$ of length $m$ report all occurrences of $P$ in $S$. We present a data structure that supports pattern matching queries in $O(m + occ (\lg\lg n + \lg^εz))$ time using $O(z \lg(n / z))$ space where $z$ is the size of the LZ77 parse of $S$ and $ε> 0$ is an arbitrarily small constant, when the alphabet is small or $z = O(n^{1 - δ})$ for any constant $δ> 0$. We also present two data structures for the general case; one where…
We present an efficient algorithm for calculating $q$-gram frequencies on strings represented in compressed form, namely, as a straight line program (SLP). Given an SLP $\mathcal{T}$ of size $n$ that represents string $T$, the algorithm computes the occurrence frequencies of all $q$-grams in $T$, by reducing the problem to the weighted $q$-gram frequencies problem on a trie-like structure of size $m = |T|-\mathit{dup}(q,\mathcal{T})$, where $\mathit{dup}(q,\mathcal{T})$ is a quantity that represents the amount of redundancy that the SLP captures with respect to $q$-grams. The reduced problem c…
We introduce a compressed data structure for the storage of free trajectories of moving objects (such as ships and planes) that efficiently supports various spatio-temporal queries. Our structure, dubbed GraCT, stores the absolute positions of all the objects at regular time intervals (snapshots) using a $k^2$-tree, which is a space- and time-efficient version of a region quadtree. Positions between snapshots are represented as logs of relative movements and compressed using Re-Pair, a grammar-based compressor. The nonterminals of this grammar are enhanced with MBR information to enable fast q…
We propose a new approach for universal lossless text compression, based on grammar compression. In the literature, a target string $T$ has been compressed as a context-free grammar $G$ in Chomsky normal form satisfying $L(G) = \{T\}$. Such a grammar is often called a \emph{straight-line program} (SLP). In this paper, we consider a probabilistic grammar $G$ that generates $T$, but not necessarily as a unique element of $L(G)$. In order to recover the original text $T$ unambiguously, we keep both the grammar $G$ and the derivation tree of $T$ from the start symbol in $G$, in compressed form. We…
Given a string $S$ of length $N$ on a fixed alphabet of $σ$ symbols, a grammar compressor produces a context-free grammar $G$ of size $n$ that generates $S$ and only $S$. In this paper we describe data structures to support the following operations on a grammar-compressed string: $\mbox{rank}_c(S,i)$ (return the number of occurrences of symbol $c$ before position $i$ in $S$); $\mbox{select}_c(S,i)$ (return the position of the $i$th occurrence of $c$ in $S$); and $\mbox{access}(S,i,j)$ (return substring $S[i,j]$). For rank and select we describe data structures of size $O(nσ\log N)$ bits that s…
Grammar-based compression is a popular and powerful approach to compressing repetitive texts but until recently its relatively poor time-space trade-offs during real-life construction made it impractical for truly massive datasets such as genomic databases. In a recent paper (SPIRE 2019) we showed how simple pre-processing can dramatically improve those trade-offs, and in this paper we turn our attention to one of the features that make grammar-based compression so attractive: the possibility of supporting fast random access. This is an essential primitive in many algorithms that process gramm…
Grammar-based compression, where one replaces a long string by a small context-free grammar that generates the string, is a simple and powerful paradigm that captures many popular compression schemes. Given a grammar, the random access problem is to compactly represent the grammar while supporting random access, that is, given a position in the original uncompressed string report the character at that position. In this paper we study the random access problem with the finger search property, that is, the time for a random access query should depend on the distance between a specified index $f$…
We solve the problems of detecting and counting various forms of regularities in a string represented as a Straight Line Program (SLP). Given an SLP of size $n$ that represents a string $s$ of length $N$, our algorithm compute all runs and squares in $s$ in $O(n^3h)$ time and $O(n^2)$ space, where $h$ is the height of the derivation tree of the SLP. We also show an algorithm to compute all gapped-palindromes in $O(n^3h + gnh\log N)$ time and $O(n^2)$ space, where $g$ is the length of the gap. The key technique of the above solution also allows us to compute the periods and covers of the string…
The convolution between a text string $S$ of length $N$ and a pattern string $P$ of length $m$ can be computed in $O(N \log m)$ time by FFT. It is known that various types of approximate string matching problems are reducible to convolution. In this paper, we assume that the input text string is given in a compressed form, as a \emph{straight-line program (SLP)}, which is a context free grammar in the Chomsky normal form that derives a single string. Given an SLP $\mathcal{S}$ of size $n$ describing a text $S$ of length $N$, and an uncompressed pattern $P$ of length $m$, we present a simple $O…
Straight-line (linear) context-free tree (SLT) grammars have been used to compactly represent ordered trees. It is well known that equivalence of SLT grammars is decidable in polynomial time. Here we extend this result and show that isomorphism of unordered trees given as SLT grammars is decidable in polynomial time. The proof constructs a compressed version of the canonical form of the tree represented by the input SLT grammar. The result is generalized to unrooted trees by "re-rooting" the compressed trees in polynomial time. We further show that bisimulation equivalence of unrooted unordere…
We show that the compressed suffix array and the compressed suffix tree of a string $T$ can be built in $O(n)$ deterministic time using $O(n\logσ)$ bits of space, where $n$ is the string length and $σ$ is the alphabet size. Previously described deterministic algorithms either run in time that depends on the alphabet size or need $ω(n\log σ)$ bits of working space. Our result has immediate applications to other problems, such as yielding the first linear-time LZ77 and LZ78 parsing algorithms that use $O(n \logσ)$ bits.
We introduce a compressed suffix array representation that, on a text $T$ of length $n$ over an alphabet of size $σ$, can be built in $O(n)$ deterministic time, within $O(n\logσ)$ bits of working space, and counts the number of occurrences of any pattern $P$ in $T$ in time $O(|P| + \log\log_w σ)$ on a RAM machine of $w=Ω(\log n)$-bit words. This new index outperforms all the other compressed indexes that can be built in linear deterministic time, and some others. The only faster indexes can be built in linear time only in expectation, or require $Θ(n\log n)$ bits. We also show that, by using $…
Indexing highly repetitive strings (i.e., strings with many repetitions) for fast queries has become a central research topic in string processing, because it has a wide variety of applications in bioinformatics and natural language processing. Although a substantial number of indexes for highly repetitive strings have been proposed thus far, developing compressed indexes that support various queries remains a challenge. The run-length Burrows-Wheeler transform (RLBWT) is a lossless data compression by a reversible permutation of an input string and run-length encoding, and it has received int…
Given a string $T$ of length $N$, the goal of grammar compression is to construct a small context-free grammar generating only $T$. Among existing grammar compression methods, RePair (recursive paring) [Larsson and Moffat, 1999] is notable for achieving good compression ratios in practice. Although the original paper already achieved a time-optimal algorithm to compute the RePair grammar RePair($T$) in expected $O(N)$ time, the study to reduce its working space is still active so that it is applicable to large-scale data. In this paper, we propose the first RePair algorithm working in compress…
We present an algorithm for building the extended BWT (eBWT) of a string collection from its grammar-compressed representation. Our technique exploits the string repetitions captured by the grammar to boost the computation of the eBWT. Thus, the more repetitive the collection is, the lower are the resources we use per input symbol. We rely on a new grammar recently proposed at DCC'21 whose nonterminals serve as building blocks for inducing the eBWT. A relevant application for this idea is the construction of self-indexes for analyzing sequencing reads -- massive and repetitive string collectio…
We consider the problem of {\em restructuring} compressed texts without explicit decompression. We present algorithms which allow conversions from compressed representations of a string $T$ produced by any grammar-based compression algorithm, to representations produced by several specific compression algorithms including LZ77, LZ78, run length encoding, and some grammar based compression algorithms. These are the first algorithms that achieve running times polynomial in the size of the compressed input and output representations of $T$. Since most of the representations we consider can achiev…
To store and search genomic databases efficiently, researchers have recently started building compressed self-indexes based on grammars. In this paper we show how, given a straight-line program with $r$ rules for a string (S [1..n]) whose LZ77 parse consists of $z$ phrases, we can store a self-index for $S$ in $\Oh{r + z \log \log n}$ space such that, given a pattern (P [1..m]), we can list the $\occ$ occurrences of $P$ in $S$ in $\Oh{m^2 + \occ \log \log n}$ time. If the straight-line program is balanced and we accept a small probability of building a faulty index, then we can reduce the $\Oh…
As nowadays Machine Learning (ML) techniques are generating huge data collections, the problem of how to efficiently engineer their storage and operations is becoming of paramount importance. In this article we propose a new lossless compression scheme for real-valued matrices which achieves efficient performance in terms of compression ratio and time for linear-algebra operations. Experiments show that, as a compressor, our tool is clearly superior to gzip and it is usually within 20% of xz in terms of compression ratio. In addition, our compressed format supports matrix-vector multiplication…
We consider the problem of computing the q-gram profile of a string \str of size $N$ compressed by a context-free grammar with $n$ production rules. We present an algorithm that runs in $O(N-α)$ expected time and uses $O(n+q+\kq)$ space, where $N-α\leq qn$ is the exact number of characters decompressed by the algorithm and $\kq\leq N-α$ is the number of distinct q-grams in $\str$. This simultaneously matches the current best known time bound and improves the best known space bound. Our space bound is asymptotically optimal in the sense that any algorithm storing the grammar and the q-gram prof…
We present an efficient algorithm for computing the LZ78 factorization of a text, where the text is represented as a straight line program (SLP), which is a context free grammar in the Chomsky normal form that generates a single string. Given an SLP of size $n$ representing a text $S$ of length $N$, our algorithm computes the LZ78 factorization of $T$ in $O(n\sqrt{N}+m\log N)$ time and $O(n\sqrt{N}+m)$ space, where $m$ is the number of resulting LZ78 factors. We also show how to improve the algorithm so that the $n\sqrt{N}$ term in the time and space complexities becomes either $nL$, where $L$…
Much research has been published about trajectory management on the ground or at the sea, but compression or indexing of flight trajectories have usually been less explored. However, air traffic management is a challenge because airspace is becoming more and more congested, and large flight data collections must be preserved and exploited for varied purposes. This paper proposes 3DGraCT, a new method for representing these flight trajectories. It extends the GraCT compact data structure to cope with a third dimension (altitude), while retaining its space/time complexities. 3DGraCT improves spa…
We propose algorithms that, given the input string of length $n$ over integer alphabet of size $σ$, construct the Burrows-Wheeler transform (BWT), the permuted longest-common-prefix (PLCP) array, and the LZ77 parsing in $O(n/\log_σn+r\,{\rm polylog}\,n)$ time and working space, where $r$ is the number of runs in the BWT of the input. These are the essential components of many compressed indexes such as compressed suffix tree, FM-index, and grammar and LZ77-based indexes, but also find numerous applications in sequence analysis and data compression. The value of $r$ is a common measure of repet…
We describe a grammar for DNA sequencing reads from which we can compute the BWT directly. Our motivation is to perform in succinct space genomic analyses that require complex string queries not yet supported by repetition-based self-indexes. Our approach is to store the set of reads as a grammar, but when required, compute its BWT to carry out the analysis by using self-indexes. Our experiments in real data showed that the space reduction we achieve with our compressor is competitive with LZ-based methods and better than entropy-based approaches. Compared to other popular grammars, in this ki…
We describe the first self-indexes able to count and locate pattern occurrences in optimal time within a space bounded by the size of the most popular dictionary compressors. To achieve this result we combine several recent findings, including \emph{string attractors} --- new combinatorial objects encompassing most known compressibility measures for highly repetitive texts ---, and grammars based on \emph{locally-consistent parsing}. More in detail, let $γ$ be the size of the smallest attractor for a text $T$ of length $n$. The measure $γ$ is an (asymptotic) lower bound to the size of dictiona…
The rise of repetitive datasets has lately generated a lot of interest in compressed self-indexes based on dictionary compression, a rich and heterogeneous family that exploits text repetitions in different ways. For each such compression scheme, several different indexing solutions have been proposed in the last two decades. To date, the fastest indexes for repetitive texts are based on the run-length compressed Burrows-Wheeler transform and on the Compact Directed Acyclic Word Graph. The most space-efficient indexes, on the other hand, are based on the Lempel-Ziv parsing and on grammar compr…
We present a new algorithm for subsequence matching in grammar compressed strings. Given a grammar of size $n$ compressing a string of size $N$ and a pattern string of size $m$ over an alphabet of size $σ$, our algorithm uses $O(n+\frac{nσ}{w})$ space and $O(n+\frac{nσ}{w}+m\log N\log w\cdot occ)$ or $O(n+\frac{nσ}{w}\log w+m\log N\cdot occ)$ time. Here $w$ is the word size and $occ$ is the number of occurrences of the pattern. Our algorithm uses less space than previous algorithms and is also faster for $occ=o(\frac{n}{\log N})$ occurrences. The algorithm uses a new data structure that allows…
Compressed bitmap indexes are used to speed up simple aggregate queries in databases. Indeed, set operations like intersections, unions and complements can be represented as logical operations (AND,OR,NOT) that are ideally suited for bitmaps. However, it is less obvious how to apply bitmaps to more advanced queries. For example, we might seek products in a store that meet some, but maybe not all, criteria. Such threshold queries generalize intersections and unions; they are often used in information-retrieval and data-mining applications. We introduce new algorithms that are sometimes three or…
A compressed full-text self-index occupies space close to that of the compressed text and simultaneously allows fast pattern matching and random access to the underlying text. Among the best compressed self-indexes, in theory and in practice, are several members of the FM-index family. In this paper, we describe new FM-index variants that combine nice theoretical properties, simple implementation and improved practical performance. Our main result is a new technique called fixed block compression boosting, which is a simpler and faster alternative to optimal compression boosting and implicit c…
Motivation: As a fundamental task in bioinformatics, searching for massive short patterns over a long text is widely accelerated by various compressed full-text indexes. These indexes are able to provide similar searching functionalities to classical indexes, e.g., suffix trees and suffix arrays, while requiring less space. For genomic data, a well-known family of compressed full-text index, called FM-indexes, presents unmatched performance in practice. One major drawback of FM-indexes is that their locating operations, which report all occurrence positions of patterns in a given text, are par…
We introduce forest straight-line programs (FSLPs) as a compressed representation of unranked ordered node-labelled trees. FSLPs are based on the operations of forest algebra and generalize tree straight-line programs. We compare the succinctness of FSLPs with two other compression schemes for unranked trees: top dags and tree straight-line programs of first-child/next sibling encodings. Efficient translations between these formalisms are provided. Finally, we show that equality of unranked trees in the setting where certain symbols are associative or commutative can be tested in polynomial ti…
