ELI5: Explain Like I'm 5

String matching

String Matching is like playing a game where you have to find a hidden word inside a bigger word. Imagine you are playing a game where you have a big word like “BALLOON” and you are looking for the word “LOON”. You have to look at every letter in the big word and see if they match the letters in the small word you are looking for.

For example, you start at the beginning of the big word and you see the letter “B”, that doesn't match the first letter of the small word, so you move on to the next letter which is “A”, that also doesn't match. Then you get to “L”. Yay! That matches the first letter of the small word. Then you keep going and you find “O”, “O”, and finally “N”. You did it! You found the word “LOON” inside “BALLOON”.

In computer science, string matching means finding a specific word or pattern within a larger text. It is a very important task in many computer programs, especially in searching and sorting data. There are many different algorithms that can be used to perform string matching, each with its own advantages and disadvantages. Some of the most common algorithms are brute force, Boyer-Moore, and Knuth-Morris-Pratt.