Experiments with a very fast substring search algorithm

Sunday devised string matching methods that are generally faster than the Boyer‐Moore algorithm. His fastest method used statistics of the language being scanned to determine the order in which character pairs are to be compared. In this paper the performances of similar, but language‐independent, algorithms are examined. Results comparable with language‐based algorithms can be achieved with an adaptive technique. In terms of character comparisons, a faster algorithm than Sunday's is constructed by using the larger of two pattern shifts.