All the useful information available must be usually utilized to recognize complex patterns with required accuracy and speed. The crucial problem which has to be repeatedly solved is to find the sophisticated strategy of utilizing this information for pattern analysis. This paper can be considered to be an extension of the paper [4] written by Nagao which appeared in Pattern Recognition Journal. The conventional strategies are only briefly reviewed, the new hierarchical strategies based on attributed hierarchical description systems and the knowledge-based strategies to pattern analysis are discussed in more detail.