Space Efficient Construction of Lyndon Arrays in Linear Time

Abstract

We present the first linear time algorithm to construct the $2n$-bit version of the Lyndon array for a string of length $n$ using only $o(n)$ bits of working space. A simpler variant of this algorithm computes the plain ($n\lg n$-bit) version of the Lyndon array using only $\mathcal{O}(1)$ words of additional working space. All previous algorithms are either not linear, or use at least $n\lg n$ bits of additional working space. Also in practice, our new algorithms outperform the previous best ones by an order of magnitude, both in terms of time and space.