multistring

Multistring is a term used in computer science to describe a data representation that stores and manipulates multiple strings as a single logical entity. It is used to improve memory efficiency and performance when handling large collections of strings, such as dictionaries, corpora, or sequence data in bioinformatics. Because the term is not standardized, implementations vary and may be found in libraries, databases, or research papers under slightly different names.

Common approaches to multistring design include storing all characters in a single contiguous buffer with an array of offsets that mark where each string begins and ends, enabling fast extraction without separate allocations for each string. Another approach uses a shared pool or string views that reference existing storage, reducing duplication when strings share content. Some designs incorporate indexing structures like tries or suffix trees to support fast lookup, prefix queries, or pattern matching across the entire set of strings. Operations typically supported include adding strings, retrieving by index or range, iterating over elements, searching for substrings or patterns, and managing memory or deduplication.

Applications of multistring structures appear in text processing, spell checking, data deduplication, and bioinformatics, where large collections of strings must be handled efficiently. Trade-offs involve memory overhead, cache locality, and the complexity of maintaining indices or shared storage, particularly in concurrent environments. The term remains informal in many contexts, with specific implementations tailored to the needs of a given system or research project.