In computer science, the Raita algorithm is a string searching algorithm which improves the performance of Boyer–Moore–Horspool algorithm. This algorithm preprocesses the string being searched for the pattern, which is similar to Boyer–Moore string-search algorithm. The searching pattern of particular sub-string in a given string is different from Boyer–Moore–Horspool algorithm. This algorithm was published by Timo Raita in 1991.

Raita algorithm searches for a pattern "P" in a given text "T" by comparing each character of pattern in the given text. Searching will be done as follows. Window for a text "T" is defined as the length of "P".

If everything in the pre-check is successful, then the original comparison starts from the second character to last but one. If there is a mismatch at any stage in the algorithm, it performs the bad character shift function which was computed in pre-processing phase. Bad character shift function is identical to the one proposed in Boyer–Moore–Horspool algorithm.

A modern formulation of a similar pre-check is found in std::string::find, a linear/quadratic string-matcher, in libc++ and libstdc++. Assuming a well-optimized version of memcmp, not skipping characters in the "original comparison" tends to be more efficient as the pattern is likely to be aligned.

Pattern: abddb

Text:abbaabaabddbabadbb

Pre- Processing stage:

Comparison of last character of pattern to rightmost character in the window. It's a mismatch and shifted by 4 according to the value in pre-processing stage.