Beate Commentz-Walter

Beate Commentz-Walter is a computer scientist who invented the Commentz-Walter string searching algorithm. The Mathematics Genealogy Project records that she earned her Ph.D. at Saarland University (Universität des Saarlandes) in 1979 with a dissertation titled Tradeoff zwischen Größe und Tiefe Boolescher Formeln under the advisor Kurt Mehlhorn, and lists her subject as computer science. The paper that describes her algorithm was first published through Saarland University in 1979 and presented two variants, called algorithms B and B1. The better known one combines the multi-pattern automaton idea of the Aho-Corasick algorithm with the backward scanning and shift tables of the Boyer-Moore algorithm, so that many patterns can be searched for at once. GNU grep once used a very similar method. Her wider publications and career are not drawn on here.