Finding all Occurrences of a Pattern by a Genetic Algorithm based Divide-and-Conquer Method

The method of finding a sequence of characters, called the pattern, in another much longer sequence of characters, called the text, is known as pattern matching. Several patternmatching algorithms exist, that locate all the positions where a pattern occurs in a text. In this paper we have presented an algorithm which implements a divide and conquer technique, which divides the text in smaller independent sub-texts and then looks for the existence of the pattern in each such subtext. The said divide and conquer method thus eventually finds all the occurrences of the pattern in the given text. The points of division have been chosen using a genetic algorithm. General Terms Pattern Matching, Genetic Algorithm, Divide and conquer