ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

Rabin–Karp string search algorithm

Okay kiddo, let me explain the Rabin-Karp string search algorithm to you.

Let's say you have a piece of text, like a book, and you want to find a specific word in it. The Rabin-Karp algorithm helps you do that.

It works by using a hash function to assign a number to each possible substring of the text. A substring is just a part of the text, like a word or a sentence.

So let's say you want to find the word "cat" in the text. The algorithm will assign a number to the substring "cat" using the hash function. It will then compare that number to the numbers assigned to all the other substrings in the text, looking for a match.

If it finds a match, it means it has found the word "cat" in the text. But sometimes there can be false matches, where two different substrings have the same number. To avoid this, the algorithm also checks each potential match by comparing the actual characters in the substring.

So basically, the Rabin-Karp algorithm uses a hash function to quickly narrow down the search for a specific substring in a piece of text, and then checks each potential match to make sure it's the right one.

Hope that makes sense!