The suffix array of a string is a permutation of all starting positions of the string's suffixes that are lexicographically sorted. We present a practical algorithm for suffix array construction that consists of two easy‐to‐implement components. First it sorts the suffixes with respect to a fixed length prefix; then it refines each bucket of suffixes sharing the same prefix using the order of already sorted suffixes. Other suffix array construction algorithms follow more complex strategies. Moreover, we achieve a very fast construction for common strings as well as for worst case strings by enhancing our algorithm with further techniques. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Suffix arrays are used in various application and research areas like data compression or computational biology. In this work, our goal is to characterize the combinatorial properties of suffix arrays and their enumeration. For fixed alphabet size and string length we count the number of strings sharing the same suffix array and the number of such suffix arrays. Our methods have applications to succinct suffix arrays and build the foundation for the efficient generation of appropriate test data sets for suffix array based algorithms. We also show that summing up the strings for all suffix arrays builds a particular instance for some summation identities of Eulerian numbers.

Suffix arrays are used in various application and research areas like data compression or computational biology. In this work, our goal is to characterize the combinatorial properties of suffix arrays and their enumeration. For fixed alphabet size and string length we count the number of strings sharing the same suffix array and the number of such suffix arrays. Our methods have applications to succinct suffix arrays and build the foundation for the efficient generation of appropriate test data sets for suffix array based algorithms. We also show that summing up the strings for all suffix arrays builds a particular instance for some summation identities of Eulerian numbers.