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A Simple, Fast, and Compact Static Dictionary

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Algorithms and Computation (ISAAC 2009)

Part of the book series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science ((LNTCS,volume 5878))

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Abstract

We present a new static dictionary that is very fast and compact, while also extremely easy to implement. A combination of properties make this algorithm very attractive for applications requiring large static dictionaries:

  1. 1

    High performance, with membership queries taking O(1)-time with a near-optimal constant.

  2. 1

    Continued high performance in external memory, with queries requiring only 1-2 disk seeks. If the dictionary has n items in \(\left\{ 0, ..., m\!-\!1 \right\}\) and d is the number of bytes retrieved from disk on each read, then the average number of seeks is \(\min\left(1.63, 1 + O\left( \frac{\sqrt{n} \log m}{d} \right)\right)\).

  3. 1

    Efficient use of space, storing n items from a universe of size m in \(n \log m - \frac{1}{2} n \log n + O\left(n + \log \log m\right)\) bits. We prove this space bound with a novel application of the Kolmogorov-Smirnov distribution.

  4. 1

    Simplicity, with a 20-line pseudo-code construction algorithm and 4-line query algorithm.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Symantec Corporation, Culver City, CA, 90230, USA

    Scott Schneider & Michael Spertus

Authors
  1. Scott Schneider
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  2. Michael Spertus
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Dept. of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Hawaii, Holmes Hall 483, 2540 Dole Street, 96822, Honolulu, HI, USA

    Yingfei Dong

  2. Department of Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas, 75083, Dallas, TX, USA

    Ding-Zhu Du

  3. Department of Computer Science, University of California, 93106, Santa Barbara, CA, USA

    Oscar Ibarra

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Schneider, S., Spertus, M. (2009). A Simple, Fast, and Compact Static Dictionary. In: Dong, Y., Du, DZ., Ibarra, O. (eds) Algorithms and Computation. ISAAC 2009. Lecture Notes in Computer Science, vol 5878. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10631-6_86

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-10631-6_86

  • Publisher Name: Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg

  • Print ISBN: 978-3-642-10630-9

  • Online ISBN: 978-3-642-10631-6

  • eBook Packages: Computer ScienceComputer Science (R0)

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