An approach to designing very fast approximate string matchingalgorithms

An approach to designing very fast algorithms for approximate string matching in a dictionary is proposed. Multiple spelling errors corresponding to insert, delete, change, and transpose operations on character strings are considered in the fault model. The design of very fast approximate string matching algorithms through a four-step reduction procedure is described. The final and most effective step uses hashing techniques to avoid comparing the given word with words at large distances. The technique has been applied to a library book catalog textbase. The experiments show that performing approximate string matching for a large dictionary in real-time on an ordinary sequential computer under our multiple fault model is feasible