Forty Years of Suffix Trees

This paper reviews the first 40 years in the life of suffix trees, their many incarnations, and their applications. The paper is non-technical but assumes some familiarity with the structures and constructions discussed. It is not meant to be exhaustive. It is meant to be a tribute to a ubiquitous tool of string matching — the suffix tree and its variants — and one of the most persistent subjects of study in the theory of algorithms.