Algorithms For Dummies

 The Part of Tens

This chapter is about algorithmic problems that would serve a purpose should 

someone find a solution for them. In short, the reason you need to care about this 

chapter is that you might find a problem that you’d really like to solve and might 

even decide to become part of the team that solves it.

Dealing with Text Searches

Many text searches involve the use of regular expressions — a sort of shorthand 

that tells the computer what to find. The grammar used for the regular expression 

depends on the language or application, but you find regular expressions used in 

a number of places, including word processors, email applications, search dialogs, 

and in all sorts of other places where you need to provide precise search terms for 

a range of text items. You can read more about regular expressions at 

http://

www.regular-expressions.info/

.

One of the current problems with regular expressions is that it seems as if every 

application environment has a similar set of rules, but with just enough differ-

ences to make creating a search term hard. The generalized star-height problem 

seeks to discover whether a generalized regular expression syntax exists. If so, the 

resulting algorithm would make it possible for someone to learn just one method 

of creating regular expressions to perform searches. You can read more about this 

problem at 

https://www.irif.fr/~jep/Problemes/starheight.html

.