BORDERS AND FINITE AUTOMATA

A border of a string is a prefix of the string that is simultaneously its suffix. It is one of the basic stringology keystones used as a part of many algorithms in pattern matching, molecular biology, computer-assisted music analysis and others.

The paper offers the automata-theoretical description of Iliopoulos's ALL_BORDERS algorithm. The algorithm finds all borders of a string with don't care symbols. We show that ALL_BORDERS algorithm is an implementation of a finite state transducer of specific form. We describe how such a transducer can be constructed and what should be the input string like. The described transducer finds a set of lengths of all borders.

Last but not least, we define approximate borders and show how to find all approximate borders of a string when we concern Hamming distance definition. Our solution of this problem is based on transducers again. This allows us to use analogy with automata-based pattern matching methods. Finally we discuss conditions under which the same principle can be used for other distance measures.