New Algorithms for Unordered Tree Inclusion

The tree inclusion problem is, given two node-labeled trees $P$ and $T$ (the "pattern tree" and the "text tree"), to locate every minimal subtree in $T$ (if any) that can be obtained by applying a sequence of node insertion operations to $P$. The ordered tree inclusion problem is known to be solvable in polynomial time while the unordered tree inclusion problem is NP-hard. The currently fastest algorithm for the latter is from 1995 and runs in $O(poly(m,n) \cdot 2^{2d}) = O^{\ast}(4^{d})$ time, where $m$ and $n$ are the sizes of the pattern and text trees, respectively, and $d$ is the degree of the pattern tree. Here, we develop a new algorithm that improves the exponent $2d$ to $d$ by considering a particular type of ancestor-descendant relationships and applying dynamic programming, thus reducing the time complexity to $O^{\ast}(2^{d})$. We then study restricted variants of the unordered tree inclusion problem where the number of occurrences of different node labels and/or the input trees' heights are bounded and show that although the problem remains NP-hard in many such cases, if the leaves of $P$ are distinctly labeled and each label occurs at most $c$ times in $T$ then it can be solved in polynomial time for $c = 2$ and in $O^{\ast}(1.8^d)$ time for $c = 3$.