The Knuth-Morris-Pratt algorithm
The KMP algorithm is a pattern matching algorithm based on the idea that the overlapping text in the pattern itself can be used to immediately know at the time of any mismatch how much the pattern should be shifted to skip unnecessary comparisons. In this algorithm, we will precompute the prefix function that indicates the required number of shifts of the pattern whenever we get a mismatch. The KMP algorithm preprocesses the pattern to avoid unnecessary comparisons using the prefix function. So, the algorithm utilizes the prefix function to estimate how much the pattern should be shifted to search the pattern in the text string whenever we get a mismatch. The KMP algorithm is efficient as it minimizes the number of comparisons of the given patterns with respect to the text string.
The motivation behind the KMP algorithm can be observed in Figure 13.4. In this example, it can be seen that the mismatch occurred at the 6th position with the last character...
