This paper describes a simple, efficient algorithm to locate all occurrences of any of a finite number of keywords in a string of text. The algorithm consists of constructing a finite state pattern matching machine from the keywords and then using the pattern matching machine to process the text string in a single pass. Construction of the pattern matching machine takes time proportional to the sum of the lengths of the keywords. The number of state transitions made by the pattern matching machine in processing the text string is independent of the number of keywords. The algorithm has been used to improve the speed of a library bibliographic search program by a factor of 5 to 10.

We consider economical representations for the path information in a directed graph. A directed graph G is said to be a transitive reduction of the directed graph G provided that (i) G has a directed path from vertex u to vertex v if and only if G has a directed path from vertex u to vertex v, and (ii) there is no graph with fewer arcs than G satisfying condition (i). Though directed graphs with cycles may have more than one such representation, we select a natural canonical representative as the transitive reduction for such graphs. It is shown that the time complexity of the best algorithm for finding the transitive reduction of a graph is the same as the time to compute the transitive closure of a graph or to perform Boolean matrix multiplication.

We present an algorithm for constructing a tree to satisfy a set of lineage constraints on common ancestors. We then apply this algorithm to synthesize a relational algebra expression from a simple tableau, a problem arising in the theory of relational databases.

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