Pattern Matching in Trees

Abstract

Tree pattern matching is an interesting special problem which occurs as a crucial step im a number of programmmg tasks, for instance, design of interpreters for nonprocedural programming languages, automatic implementations of abstract data types, code optimization m compilers, symbohc computation, context searching in structure editors, and automatic theorem provmg. As with the sorting problem, the variations in requirements and resources for each application seem to preclude a uniform, umversal solution to the tree-pattern-matching problem. Instead, a collection of well-analyzed techmques, from which specific applications may be selected and adapted, should be sought. Five new techniques for tree pattern matching are presented, analyzed for time and space complexity, and compared with previously known methods. Particularly important are applications where the same patterns are matched against many subjects and where a subject may be modified incrementally Therefore, methods which spend some tune preprocessmg patterns in order to improve the actual matching time are included. © 1982, ACM. All rights reserved.