Invited Talks and Tutorials -- Phase Transitions in Computer Science -- The Internet, the Web, and Algorithms -- Erd?s Magic -- Open Problems in Computational Geometry -- Quantum Algorithms -- Testing and Checking of Finite State Systems -- From Algorithms to Cryptography Tutorial -- Dihomotopy as a Tool in State Space Analysis Tutorial -- Regular Contributions -- Algorithms for Local Alignment with Length Constraints* -- An Algorithm That Builds a Set of Strings Given Its Overlap Graph -- Conversion between Two Multiplicatively Dependent Linear Numeration Systems -- Star Height of Reversible Languages and Universal Automata -- Weakly Iterated Block Products of Finite Monoids -- The Hidden Number Problem in Extension Fields and Its Applications -- The Generalized Weil Pairing and the Discrete Logarithm Problem on Elliptic Curves -- Random Partitions with Non Negative rth Differences -- Beta-Expansions for Cubic Pisot Numbers -- Facility Location Constrained to a Polygonal Domain -- A Deterministic Polynomial Time Algorithm for Heilbronn’s Problem in Dimension Three -- A Metric Index for Approximate String Matching -- On Maximal Suffices and Constant-Space Linear-Time Versions of KMP Algorithm -- On the Power of BFS to Determine a Graphs Diameter -- k-pseudosnakes in Large Grids -- L(2, 1)-Coloring Matrogenic Graphs -- Pipeline Transportation of Petroleum Products with No Due Dates -- Ancestor Problems on Pure Pointer Machines -- Searching in Random Partially Ordered Sets -- Packing Arrays -- Generalized Shannon Code Minimizes the Maximal Redundancy -- An Improved Algorithm for Sequence Comparison with Block Reversals -- Pattern Matching and Membership for Hierarchical Message Sequence Charts -- Improved Exact Algorithms for Max-Sat -- Characterising Strong Normalisation for Explicit Substitutions -- Parameters in Pure Type Systems -- Category, Measure, Inductive Inference: A Triality Theorem and Its Applications -- Verification of Embedded Reactive Fiffo Systems -- Electronic Jury Voting Protocols -- Square Roots Modulo p -- Finding Most Sustainable Paths in Networks with Time-Dependent Edge Reliabilities -- Signals for Cellular Automata in Dimension 2 or Higher -- Holographic Trees -- On the Spanning Ratio of Gabriel Graphs and ?-skeletons -- In-Place Planar Convex Hull Algorithms -- The Level Ancestor Problem Simplified -- Flow Metrics -- On Logical Descriptions of Regular Languages -- Computing Boolean Functions from Multiple Faulty Copies of Input Bits -- Inapproximability Results on Stable Marriage Problems -- Tight Bounds for Online Class-Constrained Packing -- On-line Algorithms for Edge-Disjoint Paths in Trees of Rings -- Massive Quasi-Clique Detection -- Improved Tree Decomposition Based Algorithms for Domination-like Problems.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 5th International Symposium, Latin American Theoretical Informatics, LATIN 2002, held in Cancun, Mexico, in April 2002. The 44 revised full papers presented together with a tutorial and 7 abstracts of invited contributions were carefully reviewed and selected from a total of 104 submissions. The papers presented are devoted to a broad range of topics from theoretical computer science and mathematical foundations, with a certain focus on algorithmics and computations related to discrete structures.