NIST

longest common subsequence

(classic problem)

Definition: The problem of finding a maximum length (or maximum weight) subsequence of two or more strings.

Also known as heaviest common subsequence.

See also Ratcliff/Obershelp pattern recognition, longest common substring, shortest common supersequence.

Note: The longest common substring is contiguous, while the longest common subsequence need not be.

From Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook, page 13-17, Copyright © 1999 by CRC Press LLC. Appearing in the Dictionary of Computer Science, Engineering and Technology, Copyright © 2000 CRC Press LLC.

Author: CRC-A

Implementation

(C and Mathematica)

More information

Dan Hirschberg's pseudocode as an example of dynamic programming Longest-common subsequence problem in Wikipedia.


Go to the Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures home page.

If you have suggestions, corrections, or comments, please get in touch with Paul Black.

Entry modified 2 September 2014.
HTML page formatted Mon Feb 2 13:10:39 2015.

Cite this as:
Algorithms and Theory of Computation Handbook, CRC Press LLC, 1999, "longest common subsequence", in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Vreda Pieterse and Paul E. Black, eds. 2 September 2014. (accessed TODAY) Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/longestCommonSubsequence.html