Decide the existence of a string homomorphism Consider the following problem:


  Given two strings x,y, decide whether there exists a string homomorphism f such that f(x)=y.


It is easy to show that this problem is in $NP$. Are there other things we can say about this problem? e.g. Is it in $coNP$, or even $P$?

This problem seems very natural, so I am not surprised if it has been studied thoroughly. However I could not find this problem in literature.
It's discussed in one of the very first papers about strings and complexity, namely, Dana Angluin, Finding patterns common to a set of strings, J. Comput. System Sci.
21 (1980), 46-62.  Look at Theorem 3.6.  The problem is NP-complete.

It's also in A. Ehrenfeucht, G. Rozenberg, Finding a homomorphism between two words is NP-complete, Inform. Process. Lett. 9 (1979) 86–88.