Extracting approximate patterns

We present an incremental algorithm that computes the primitive patterns occurring at least q times in a text of length n, given the N primitive patterns occurring at least q−1 times, in time O(|Σ|Nn2logn), where Σ is the alphabet. In the particular case where q=2, the complexity in time is only O(|Σ|n2logn). We also give an algorithm that decides if a given pattern is primitive in a given text. These algorithms are generalized, taking many sequences in input. Finally, we give a solution for reducing the number of patterns of interest by using scoring techniques, as we show that the number of primitive patterns is exponential.