Generalized LCS

摘要

The Longest Common Subsequence (LCS) is a well studied problem, having a wide range of implementations. Its motivation is in comparing strings. It has long been of interest to devise a similar measure for comparing higher dimensional objects, and more complex structures. In this paper we give, what is to our knowledge, the first inherently multi-dimensional definition of LCS. We discuss the Longest Common Substructure of two matrices and the Longest Common Subtree problem for multiple trees including a constrained version. Both problems cannot be solved by a natural extension of the original LCS solution. We investigate the tractability of the above problems. For the first we prove NP-Completeness. For the latter NP-hardness holds for two general unordered trees and for k trees in the constrained LCS.