The study of strings is an important combinatorial field that precedes the digital computer. Strings can be very long, trillions of letters, so it is important to find compact representations. Here we first survey various forms of one potential compaction methodology, the cover of a given string x, initially proposed in a simple form in 1990, but increasingly of interest as more sophisticated variants have been discovered. We then consider covering by a seed; that is, a cover of a superstring of x. We conclude with many proposals for research directions that could make significant contributions to string processing in future.

翻译：字符串研究是数字计算机之前的一个重要组合字段。字符串可以是很长的,万亿个字母,因此必须找到压缩的表示方式。我们在这里首先调查一种潜在压缩方法的各种形式,即1990年最初以简单形式提议的给定字符串x的封面,但随着发现更先进的变异体,人们越来越感兴趣。我们然后考虑用种子来覆盖,也就是以X的超级字符串为掩护。我们最后提出了许多研究方向的建议,这些研究方向可以在今后对字符串处理做出重大贡献。