String matching as a special case of pattern matching, is a very important field in computer science as much from a theoretical viewpoint as from a practical one. It occurs, for instance, in text processing, information retrieval, and computational biology. The pattern is set up by a finite sequence of characters.
String searching consists in finding one or in general all the occurrences of a word x (pattern) of length m in a text y (text) of length n. Both x and y are built over the same alphabet. Different techniques are being used to design efficient and fast string matching methods and Java, the new buzzword in Computing community, is being used extensively to program the methods for animations over the Internet.
Some informative Web sites
Java Applets for String Matching Algorithms. String Matching Algorithm Animation - An Applet String matching algorithms by Lecroq String and
Character Processing Routines String processing Guide The Prague Stringology Club, Dept. of Comp. Sci. and Eng., Czech Tech. University The String class to extend GNU C++ to support string processing capabilities String Processing and Information Retrieval - Research papers String processing/Pattern Matching Researchers List String functions Comparison study of four string matching algorithms String Matching Algorithms Book