Analyzing Edit Distance on Trees : Tree Swap Distance is Intractable

The string correction problem looks at minimal ways to modify one stringinto another using fixed operations, such as for example inserting a symbol, deleting asymbol and interchanging the positions of two symbols (a “swap”). This has been generalizedto trees in various ways, but unfortunately having operations to insert/deletenodes in the tree and operations that move subtrees, such as a “swap” of adjacent subtrees,makes the correction problem for trees intractable. In this paper we investigatewhat happens when we have a tree edit distance problem with only swaps. We callthis problem tree swap distance, and go on to prove that this correction problem isNP-complete. This suggests that the swap operation is fundamentally problematic inthe tree case, and other subtree movement models should be studied