Year: 2026
Type: preprint
Abstract: The shortest common superstring problem is to find the shortest string that contains every string in a given set as a substring. It is conjectured that the greedy algorithm that repeatedly selects a pair of strings with maximum overlap and merges them is a $2$-approximation algorithm, and this conjecture had remained open for nearly four decades. In this paper, we disprove this conjecture and show that the approximation ratio of this algorithm is at least $9/4$.
Source: arXiv (Cornell University)
Author: Shibata, Hiroki
Institution: Kyushu University
Subfield: Artificial Intelligence
Field: Computer Science
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7206150774
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