Conservative String Covering of Indeterminate Strings

We study the problem of finding local and global covers as well as seeds in conservative indeterminate strings. An indeterminate string is a sequence T = T [1]T [2] . . . T [n], where T [i] ⊆ Σ for each i, and Σ is a given alphabet of fixed size. A conservative indeterminate string, is an indeterminate string where the number of indeterminate symbols in the positions of the string, i.e the non-solid symbols, is bounded by a constant κ. We present an algorithm for finding a conservative indeterminate pattern p in an indeterminate string t. Furthermore, we present algorithms for computing conservative covers and seeds of the string t.