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The Random Access Zipper

Simple, Persistent Sequences

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Trends in Functional Programming (TFP 2016)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 10447))

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Abstract

We introduce the Random Access Zipper (RAZ), a simple, persistent data structure for editable sequences. The RAZ combines the structure of a zipper with that of a tree: like a zipper, edits at the cursor require constant time; by leveraging tree structure, relocating the edit cursor in the sequence requires log time. While existing data structures provide these time bounds, none do so with the same simplicity and brevity of code as the RAZ. The simplicity of the RAZ provides the opportunity for more programmers to extend the structure to their own needs, and we provide some suggestions for how to do so.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    In short, these levels represent the heights of uniformly randomly chosen nodes in a full, balanced binary tree. See Sect. 3.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Colorado Boulder, Boulder, USA

    Kyle Headley & Matthew A. Hammer

Authors
  1. Kyle Headley
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  2. Matthew A. Hammer
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kyle Headley .

Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. University of Maryland, College Park, MD, USA

    David Van Horn

  2. Chalmers University of Technology, Gothenburg, Sweden

    John Hughes

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Headley, K., Hammer, M.A. (2019). The Random Access Zipper. In: Van Horn, D., Hughes, J. (eds) Trends in Functional Programming. TFP 2016. Lecture Notes in Computer Science(), vol 10447. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14805-8_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-14805-8_9

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Cham

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-030-14804-1

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-030-14805-8

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