The.Algorithm.Design.Manual.Springer-Verlag.1998

Shortest Common Superstring
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Shortest Common Superstring
Input description: A set of strings .
Problem description: Find the shortest string S' that contains each element of S as a substring.
Discussion: Shortest common superstring arises in a variety of applications, including sparse matrix
compression. Suppose we have an matrix with most of the elements being zero. We can partition
each row into m/k runs of k elements each and construct the shortest common superstring S' of these runs.
We now have reduced the problem to storing the superstring, plus an array of pointers into the
superstring denoting where each of the runs starts. Accessing a particular element M[i,j] still takes
constant time, but there is a space savings when |S|