Analysis of Maximal Repetitions in Strings

The cornerstone of any algorithm computing all repetitions in strings of length n in $${\mathcal O}(n)$$ time is the fact that the number of maximal repetitions (runs) is linear. Therefore, the most important part of the analysis of the running time of such algorithms is counting the number of runs. Kolpakov and Kucherov [FOCS’99] proved it to be cn but could not provide any value for c. Recently, Rytter [STACS’06] proved that c ≤ 5. His …