Factorizing a String into Squares in Linear Time

Abstract

A square factorization of a string w is a factorization of w in which each factor is a square. Dumitran et al. [SPIRE 2015, pp. 54-66] showed how to find a square factorization of a given string of length n in O(n log n) time, and they posed a question whether it can be done in O(n) time. In this paper, we answer their question positively, showing an O(n)-time algorithm for square factorization in the standard word RAM model with machine word size omega = Omega(log n). We also show an O(n + (n log^2 n) / omega)-time (respectively, O(n log n)-time) algorithm to find a square factorization which contains the maximum (respectively, minimum) number of squares.