A tutorial on Suffix Arrays

I have been researching suffix array for last couple of days. This tutorial has certainly been of great help. Also I find the link given for skew algorithm to be much simpler at least in theoretical sense.

However I ran into a problem with the statement in the given link which says

Recursively handle suffixes from the i mod 3 = 1 and i mod 3 = 2 groups.

I understand the division of the string into 1,2 mod 3 group & 0 mod 3 group. But I do not get the point of recursively solving this step to get the suffix array.

@kuruma It would be of great help if you could clarify my doubt.

awesome explaination dude… seriously… finally i got the suffix array… :slight_smile:

awesome (y)

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very Good… :slight_smile:

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Now, we can call quick-sort and sort the suffixes according to their first 4 characters by using the 2-tuples we constructed above! The result would be

can anyone please explain the above line???qsort is called in which tuple…

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how tuples r used for sorting please explain???

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Really,easy to understand from this tutorial!!!:slight_smile:

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Now, we can call quick-sort and sort the suffixes according to their first
4 characters by using the 2-tuples we
constructed above! The result would
be:

6 6: sissippi
7 3:
sippi
8 5: ssissippi
9 2: ssippi

Can anyone explain me the result of above step. How are the suffixes sorted according to first 4 characters after calling quick sort.
I mean, how is ‘sissippi’ is having a lower sort-index then ‘sippi’ and simmilarly how is ‘ssissippi’ having a lower sort-index than ‘ssippi’ ?
I think the correct order should be:

6 6: sippi
7 3:
sissippi
8 5: ssippi
9 2: ssissippi

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In the naive approach, shouldn’t the loop go from i=0 to s.size() rather than i=0 to s.size()-1 ?

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well explained, but I think there should be some correction in the table given below:
Sort-Index Suffix-Index

0       10: i
1        7: ippi
2        1: ississippi
2        4: issippi
3        0: mississippi
4        9: pi
5        8: ppi
6        3: sissippi
7        6: sippi
8        2: ssissippi
9        5: ssippi
till (compared)4th character,  8 sort_index should be "ssippi" and 9th should "ssissippi" same in 6 & 7 sort_index
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Shouldn’t it be
“We can use the SortIndex array we constructed above to find the Longest Common Prefix, between any two suffixes”
instead of
“We can use the SortIndex array we constructed above to find the Longest Common Prefix, between any two prefixes.”

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I am a beginner. Very well written sir. It was a deep and helpful insight.

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I think the final answer given is wrong. It should be

sort-Index Suffix-Index

0       10: i
1        7: ippi
2        1: ississippi
2        4: issippi
3        0: mississippi
4        9: pi
5        8: ppi
6        6: sippi
7        3: sissippi
8        5: ssippi
9        2: ssissippi

This was awesome!
Thanks Bruno.

while sorting the suffixes according to the first 4 characters, why is “3” not assigned in the second tuple ??

shouldn’t in the naive approach

for(int i = 0; i < s.size();i++)
{
    m[s.substr(i,s.size()-i)] = i;
    v.push_back(s.substr(i,s.size()-i));
}

should be:

for(int i = 0; i < s.size();i++)
{
    m[s.substr(i,s.size()-1)] = i;
    v.push_back(s.substr(i,s.size()-1));
}

???

notice the size() - 1 instead of size()-i

very good explanation…

Another nice tutorial :slight_smile:

Really Helpful! Cheers :smiley:

I am getting wrong suffix array for input
ebbacb

Actual output is

5 3 2 0 4 1

While It should be

3 5 2 1 4 0