A faster algorithm for approximate string matching -- Boyer-Moore strategy to efficient approximate string matching -- Randomized efficient algorithms for compressed strings: the finger-print approach -- Filtration with q-samples in approximate string matching -- Computing discoveries in molecular biology -- Approximate dictionary queries -- Approximate multiple string search -- A 2 2/3-approximation algorithm for the shortest superstring problem -- Suffix trees on words -- The suffix tree of a tree and minimizing sequential transducers -- Perfect hashing for strings: Formalization and algorithms -- Spliced alignment: A new approach to gene recognition -- Original Synteny -- Fast sorting by reversal -- A double combinatorial approach to discovering patterns in biological sequences -- Poisson process approximation for repeats in one sequence and its application to sequencing by hybridization -- Improved approximation algorithms for tree alignment -- The asymmetric median tree — A new model for building consensus trees -- Constructing computer virus phylogenies -- Docking of conformationally flexible proteins -- Invariant patterns in crystal lattices: Implications for protein folding algorithms (extended abstract) -- Graph traversals, genes, and matroids: An efficient case of the travelling salesman problem -- Alphabet independent and dictionary scaled matching -- Analysis of two-dimensional approximate pattern matching algorithms -- Approximation algorithms for maximum two-dimensional pattern matching -- Efficient parallel algorithms for tree editing problems -- Approximate pattern matching in directed graphs -- Finite-state computability of annotations of strings and trees (extended abstract).

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 7th Annual Symposium on Combinatorial Pattern Matching, CPM '96, held in Laguna Beach, California, USA, in June 1996. The 26 revised full papers included were selected from a total of 48 submissions; also included are two invited papers. Combinatorial pattern matching has become a full-fledged area of algorithmics with important applications in recent years. The book addresses all relevant aspects of combinatorial pattern matching and its importance in information retrieval, pattern recognition, compiling, data compression, program analysis, and molecular biology and thus describes the state of the art in the area.