New and Improved Algorithms for Unordered Tree Inclusion

The tree inclusion problem is, given two node-labeled trees $P$ and $T$ (the ``pattern tree'' and the ``target tree''), to locate every minimal subtree in $T$ (if any) that can be obtained by applying a sequence of node insertion operations to $P$. Although the ordered tree inclusion problem is solvable in polynomial time, the unordered tree inclusion problem is NP-hard. The currently fastest algorithm for the latter is a classic algorithm by Kilpeläinen and Mannila from 1995 that runs in $O(2^{2d} mn)$ time, where $m$ and $n$ are the sizes of the pattern and target trees, respectively, and $d$ is the degree of the pattern tree. Here, we develop a new algorithm that runs in $O(2^{d} mn^2)$ time, improving the exponential factor from $2^{2d}$ to $2^d$ by considering a particular type of ancestor-descendant relationships that is suitable for dynamic programming. We also study restricted variants of the unordered tree inclusion problem.