Plaintext
Open Data Structures (in Java)
Pat Morin
Edition 0.1E
Acknowledgments
I am grateful to Nima Hoda, who spent a summer tirelessly proofreading many of the
chapters in this book, and to the students in the Fall 2011 offering of COMP2402/2002,
who put up with the first draft of this book and spotted many typographic, grammatical,
and factual errors in the first draft.
i
Why This Book?
There are plenty of books that teach introductory data structures. Some of them are very
good. Most of them cost money, and the vast majority of computer science undergraduate
students will shell-out at least some cash on a data structures book.
There are a few free data structures books available online. Some are very good, but
most of them are getting old. The majority of these books became free when the author
and/or publisher decided to stop updating them. Updating these books is usually not
possible, for two reasons: (1) The copyright belongs to the author or publisher, who may
not allow it. (2) The source code for these books is often not available. That is, the Word,
WordPerfect, FrameMaker, or LATEX source for the book is not available, and the version of
the software that handles this source may not even be available.
The goal of this project is to forever free undergraduate computer science students
from having to pay for an introductory data structures book. I have decided to implement
this goal by treating this book like an Open Source software project. The LATEX source, Java
source, and build scripts for the book are available for download on the book’s website
(opendatastructures.org) and also, more importantly, on a reliable source code man-
agement site (github.com/patmorin/ods).
This source code is released under a Creative Commons Attribution license, mean-
ing that anyone is free to share: to copy, distribute and transmit the work; and to remix: to
adapt the work, including the right to make commercial use of the work. The only condi-
tion on these rights is attribution: you must acknowledge that the derived work contains
code and/or text from opendatastructures.org.
Anyone can contribute corrections/fixes using the git source-code management
system. Anyone can fork from the current version of the book and develop their own
version (for example, in another programming language). They can then ask that their
changes be merged back into my version. My hope is that, by doing things this way, this
book will continue to be a useful textbook long after my interest in the project (or my
pulse, whichever comes first) has waned.
iii
iv
Contents
1 Introduction 1
1.0.1 The Need for Efficiency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.1 Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.1 The Queue, Stack, and Deque Interfaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.1.2 The List Interface: Linear Sequences . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
1.1.3 The USet Interface: Unordered Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.1.4 The SSet Interface: Sorted Sets . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
1.2 Mathematical Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.2.1 Exponentials and Logarithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
1.2.2 Factorials . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.3 Asymptotic Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
1.2.4 Randomization and Probability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
1.3 The Model of Computation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.4 Correctness, Time Complexity, and Space Complexity . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
1.5 Code Samples . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
1.6 List of Data Structures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
1.7 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23
2 Array-Based Lists 27
2.1 ArrayStack: Fast Stack Operations Using an Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.1.1 The Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
2.1.2 Growing and Shrinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
2.1.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
2.2 FastArrayStack: An Optimized ArrayStack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
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Contents Contents
2.3 ArrayQueue: An Array-Based Queue . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
2.3.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36
2.4 ArrayDeque: Fast Deque Operations Using an Array . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
2.4.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.5 DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
2.5.1 Balancing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 42
2.5.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.6 RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44
2.6.1 Analysis of Growing and Shrinking . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
2.6.2 Space Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.6.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49
2.6.4 Computing Square Roots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
2.7 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
3 Linked Lists 57
3.1 SLList: A Singly-Linked List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
3.1.1 Queue Operations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59
3.1.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.2 DLList: A Doubly-Linked List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
3.2.1 Adding and Removing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 62
3.2.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
3.3 SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 64
3.3.1 Space Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.3.2 Finding Elements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65
3.3.3 Adding an Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67
3.3.4 Removing an Element . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
3.3.5 Amortized Analysis of Spreading and Gathering . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
3.3.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
3.4 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
4 Skiplists 77
4.1 The Basic Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 77
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Contents Contents
4.2 SkiplistSSet: An Efficient SSet Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
4.2.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82
4.3 SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation . . . . . . 82
4.3.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.4 Analysis of Skiplists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
4.5 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90
5 Hash Tables 95
5.1 ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
5.1.1 Multiplicative Hashing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
5.1.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.2 LinearHashTable: Linear Probing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
5.2.1 Analysis of Linear Probing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
5.2.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.2.3 Tabulation Hashing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
5.3 Hash Codes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
5.3.1 Hash Codes for Primitive Data Types . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.3.2 Hash Codes for Compound Objects . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
5.3.3 Hash Codes for Arrays and Strings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 111
5.4 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 113
6 Binary Trees 119
6.1 BinaryTree: A Basic Binary Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
6.1.1 Recursive Algorithms . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.1.2 Traversing Binary Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
6.2 BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.2.1 Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124
6.2.2 Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
6.2.3 Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
6.2.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
6.3 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130
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Contents Contents
7 Random Binary Search Trees 135
7.1 Random Binary Search Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 135
7.1.1 Proof of Lemma 7.1 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 137
7.1.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
7.2 Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
7.2.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
7.3 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
8 Scapegoat Trees 153
8.1 ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding . . . . . . . . . 154
8.1.1 Analysis of Correctness and Running-Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 157
8.1.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 159
8.2 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 160
9 Red-Black Trees 165
9.1 2-4 Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
9.1.1 Adding a Leaf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
9.1.2 Removing a Leaf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
9.2 RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 168
9.2.1 Red-Black Trees and 2-4 Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 170
9.2.2 Left-Leaning Red-Black Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
9.2.3 Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
9.2.4 Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 177
9.3 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
9.4 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 183
10 Heaps 187
10.1 BinaryHeap: An Implicit Binary Tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 187
10.1.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
10.2 MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
10.2.1 Analysis of merge(h1, h2) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 195
10.2.2 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
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Contents Contents
10.3 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 197
11 Sorting Algorithms 199
11.1 Comparison-Based Sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
11.1.1 Merge-Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
11.1.2 Quicksort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 203
11.1.3 Heap-sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
11.1.4 A Lower-Bound for Comparison-Based Sorting . . . . . . . . . . . . . 208
11.2 Counting Sort and Radix Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
11.2.1 Counting Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211
11.2.2 Radix-Sort . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 213
11.3 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 214
12 Graphs 219
12.1 AdjacencyMatrix: Representing a Graph by a Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 221
12.2 AdjacencyLists: A Graph as a Collection of Lists . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 224
12.3 Graph Traversal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
12.3.1 Breadth-First Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
12.3.2 Depth-First Search . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 229
12.4 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
13 Data Structures for Integers 235
13.1 BinaryTrie: A digital search tree . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 236
13.2 XFastTrie: Searching in Doubly-Logarithmic Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
13.3 YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 243
13.4 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 248
14 External Memory Searching 251
14.1 The Block Store . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
14.2 B-Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
14.2.1 Searching . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
14.2.2 Addition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 257
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Contents Contents
14.2.3 Removal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 261
14.2.4 Amortized Analysis of B-Trees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
14.3 Discussion and Exercises . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
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Chapter 1
Introduction
Every computer science curriculum in the world includes a course on data structures and
algorithms. Data structures are that important; they improve our quality of life and even
save lives on a regular basis. Many multi-million and several multi-billion dollar compa-
nies have been built around data structures.
How can this be? If we think about it for even a few minutes, we realize that we
interact with data structures constantly.
• Open a file: File system data structures are used to locate the parts of that file on
disk so they can be retrieved. This isn’t easy; disks contain hundreds of millions of
blocks. The contents of your file could be stored on any one of them.
• Look up a contact on your phone: A data structure is used to lookup a phone number
based on partial information even before you finish dialing/typing. This isn’t easy;
your phone may contain information about a lot of people—everyone you have ever
had phone or email contact with—and your phone doesn’t have a very fast processor
or a lot of memory.
• Login to your favourite social network: The network servers use your login infor-
mation look up your account information. This isn’t easy; the most popular social
networks have hundreds of millions of active users.
• Do a web search: The search engine uses data structures to find the web pages con-
taining your search terms. This isn’t easy; there are over 8.5 billion web pages on the
Internet and each page contains a lot of potential search terms.
• Phone emergency services (9-1-1): The emergency services network looks up your
phone number in a data structure that maps phone numbers to addresses so that
1
1. Introduction
police cars, ambulances, or fire trucks can be sent there without delay. This is impor-
tant; the person making the call may not be able to provide the exact address they
are calling from and a delay can mean the difference between life or death.
1.0.1 The Need for Efficiency
In the next section, we look at the operations supported by the most commonly used data
structures. Anyone with even a little bit of programming experience will see that these
operations are not hard to implement correctly. We can store the data in an array or a
linked list and each operation can be implemented by iterating over all the elements of
the array or list and possibly adding or removing an element.
This kind of implementation is easy, but not very efficient. Does it really mat-
ter? Computers are getting faster and faster. Maybe the obvious implementation is good
enough. Let’s do some back-of-the-envelope calculations to find out.
Number of operations: Imagine an application with a moderately-sized data set, say of
one million (106 ), items. It is reasonable, in most applications, to assume that the applica-
tion will want to look up each item at least once. This means we can expect to do at least
one million (106 ) lookups in this data. If each of these 106 lookups inspects each of the
106 items, this gives a total of 106 × 106 = 1012 (one thousand billion) inspections.
Processor speeds: At the time of writing, even a very fast desktop computer can not do
more than one billion (109 ) operations per second.1 This means that this application will
take at least 1012 /109 = 1000 seconds, or roughly 16 minutes and 40 seconds. 16 minutes
is an eon in computer time, but a person might be willing to put up with it (if they were
headed out for a coffee break).
Bigger data sets: Now consider a company like Google, that indexes over 8.5 billion web
pages. By our calculations, doing any kind of query over this data would take at least 8.5
seconds. We already know that this isn’t the case; web searches complete in much less than
8.5 seconds, and they do much more complicated queries than just asking if a particular
page is in their list of indexed pages. At the time of writing, Google receives approximately
4, 500 queries per second, meaning that they would require at least 4, 500 × 8.5 = 38, 250
very fast servers just to keep up.
1 Computer speeds are at most a few gigahertz (billions of cycles per second) and each operation typically
takes a few cycles.
2
1. Introduction
The solution: These examples tell us that the obvious implementations of data structures
do not scale well when the number of items, n, in the data structure and the number of
operations, m, performed on the data structure are both large. In these cases, the time
(measured in, say, machine instructions) is roughly n × m.
The solution, of course, is to carefully organize data within the data structure so
that not every operation requires inspecting every data item. Although it sounds impossi-
ble at first, we will see data structures where a search requires looking at only 2 items on
average, independent of the number of items stored in the data structure. In our billion
instruction per second computer it takes only 0.000000002 seconds to search in a data
structure containing a billion items (or a trillion, or a quadrillion, or even a quintillion
items).
We will also see implementations of data structures that keep the items in sorted
order, where the number of items inspected during an operation grows very slowly as a
function of the number of items in the data structure. For example, we can maintain a
sorted set of one billion items while inspecting at most 60 items during any operation.
In our billion instruction per second computer, these operations take 0.00000006 seconds
each.
The remainder of this chapter briefly reviews some of the main concepts used
throughout the rest of the book. Section 1.1 describes the interfaces implemented by all
the data structures described in this book and should be considered required reading. The
remaining sections discuss:
• some mathematical background including exponentials, logarithms, factorials, asymp-
totic (big-Oh) notation, probability, and randomization;
• the model of computation;
• correctness, running time, and space;
• an overview of the rest of the chapters; and
• the sample code and typesetting conventions.
A reader with or without a background in these areas can easily skip them now and come
back to them later if necessary.
3
1. Introduction 1.1. Interfaces
1.1 Interfaces
In discussing data structures, it is important to understand the difference between a data
structure’s interface and its implementation. An interface describes what a data structure
does, while an implementation describes how the data structure does it.
An interface, sometimes also called an abstract data type, defines the set of opera-
tions supported by a data structure and the semantics, or meaning, of those operations.
An interface tells us nothing about how the data structure implements these operations, it
only provides the list of supported operations along with specifications about what types
of arguments each operation accepts and the value returned by each operation.
A data structure implementation on the other hand, includes the internal represen-
tation of the data structure as well as the definitions of the algorithms that implement the
operations supported by the data structure. Thus, there can be many implementations of a
single interface. For example, in Chapter 2, we will see implementations of the List inter-
face using arrays and in Chapter 3 we will see implementations of the List interface using
pointer-based data structures. Each implements the same interface, List, but in different
ways.
1.1.1 The Queue, Stack, and Deque Interfaces
The Queue interface represents a collection of elements to which we can add elements and
remove the next element. More precisely, the operations supported by the Queue interface
are
• add(x): add the value x to the Queue
• remove(): remove the next (previously added) value, y, from the Queue and return y
Notice that the remove() operation takes no argument. The Queue’s queueing discipline
decides which element should be removed. There are many possible queueing disciplines,
the most common of which include FIFO, priority, and LIFO.
A FIFO (first-in-first-out) Queue, illustrated in Figure 1.1, removes items in the same
order they were added, much in the same way a queue (or line-up) works when checking
out at a cash register in a grocery store. This is the most common kind of Queue so the
qualifier FIFO is often ommitted. In other texts, the add(x) and remove() operations on a
FIFO Queue are often called enqueue(x) and dequeue(), respectively.
A priority Queue, illustrated in Figure 1.2, always removes the smallest element
from the Queue, breaking ties arbitrarily. This is similar to the way patients are triaged
4
1. Introduction 1.1. Interfaces
x ···
add(x)/enqueue(x) remove()/dequeue()
Figure 1.1: A FIFO Queue.
add(x) remove()/deleteMin()
6 3
x
16 13
Figure 1.2: A priority Queue.
in a hospital emergency room. As patients arrive they are evaluated and then placed in a
waiting room. When a doctor becomes available they first treat the patient with the most
life-threatening condition. The remove(x) operation on a priority Queue is usually called
deleteMin() in other texts.
A very common queueing discipline is the LIFO (last-in-first-out) discipline, illus-
trated in Figure 1.3. In a LIFO Queue, the most recently added element is the next one
removed. This is best visualized in terms of a stack of plates; plates are placed on the top
of the stack and also removed from the top of the stack. This structure is so common that
it gets its own name: Stack. Often, when discussing a Stack, the names of add(x) and
remove() are changed to push(x) and pop(); this is to avoid confusing the LIFO and FIFO
queueing disciplines.
A Deque is a generalization of both the FIFO Queue and LIFO Queue (Stack). A
Deque represents a sequence of elements, with a front and a back. Elements can be added
at the front of the sequence or the back of the sequence. The names of the operations on
add(x)/push(x)
··· x
remove()/ pop()
Figure 1.3: A stack.
5
1. Introduction 1.1. Interfaces
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 ··· n−1
a b c d e f b k ··· c
Figure 1.4: A List represents a sequence indexed by 0, 1, 2, . . . , n. In this List a call to
get(2) would return the value c.
a Deque are self-explanatory: addFirst(x), removeFirst(), addLast(x), and removeLast().
Notice that a Stack can be implemented using only addFirst(x) and removeFirst() while
a FIFO Queue can be implemented using only addLast(x) and removeFirst().
1.1.2 The List Interface: Linear Sequences
This book will talk very little about the FIFO Queue, Stack, or Deque interfaces. This
is because these interfaces are subsumed by the List interface. A List, illustrated in
Figure 1.4, represents a sequence, x0 , . . . , xn−1 , of values. The List interface includes the
following operations:
1. size(): return n, the length of the list
2. get(i): return the value xi
3. set(i, x): set the value of xi equal to x
4. add(i, x): add x at position i, displacing xi , . . . , xn−1 ;
Set xj+1 = xj , for all j ∈ {n − 1, . . . , i}, increment n, and set xi = x
5. remove(i) remove the value xi , displacing xi+1 , . . . , xn−1 ;
Set xj = xj+1 , for all j ∈ {i, . . . , n − 2} and decrement n
Notice that these operations are easily sufficient to implement the Deque interface:
addFirst(x) ⇒ add(0, x)
removeFirst() ⇒ remove(0)
addLast(x) ⇒ add(size(), x)
removeLast() ⇒ remove(size() − 1)
Although we will normally not discuss the Stack, Deque and FIFO Queue interfaces
in subsequent chapters, the terms Stack and Deque are sometimes used in the names of
data structures that implement the List interface. When this happens, it is to highlight the
6
1. Introduction 1.1. Interfaces
fact that these data structures can be used to implement the Stack or Deque interface very
efficiently. For example, the ArrayDeque class is an implementation of the List interface
that implements all the Deque operations in constant time per operation.
1.1.3 The USet Interface: Unordered Sets
The USet interface represents an unordered set of unique elements, mimicking a mathe-
matical set. A USet contains n distinct elements; no element appears more than once; the
elements are in no specific order. A USet supports the following operations:
1. size(): return the number, n, of elements in the set
2. add(x): add the element x to the set if not already present;
Add x to the set provided that there is no element y in the set such that x equals y.
Return true if x was added to the set and false otherwise.
3. remove(x): remove x from the set;
Find an element y in the set such that x equals y and remove y. Return y, or null if
no such element exists.
4. find(x): find x in the set if it exists;
Find an element y in the set such that y equals x. Return y, or null if no such element
exists.
These definitions are a bit fussy about distinguishing x, the element we are remov-
ing or finding, from y, the element we remove or find. This is because x and y might
actually be distinct objects that are nevertheless treated as equal.2 This is a very useful
distinction since it allows for the creation of dictionaries or maps that map keys onto val-
ues. This is done by creating a compound object called a Pair that contains a key and a
value. Two Pairs are treated as equal if their keys are equal. By storing Pairs in a USet,
we can find the value associated with any key k by creating a Pair, x, with key k and using
the find(x) method.
1.1.4 The SSet Interface: Sorted Sets
The SSet interface represents a sorted set of elements. An SSet stores elements from some
total order, so that any two elements x and y can be compared. In code examples, this will
2 In Java, this is done by overriding the class’ equals(y) and hashCode() methods.
7
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
be done with a method called compare(x, y) in which
<0 if x < y
compare(x, y)
>0 if x > y
=0 if x = y
An SSet supports the size(), add(x), and remove(x) methods with exactly the same seman-
tics as in the USet interface. The difference between a USet and an SSet is in the find(x)
method:
4. find(x): locate x in the sorted set;
Find the smallest element y in the set such that y ≥ x. Return y or null if no such
element exists.
This version of the find(x) operation is sometimes referred to as a successor search.
It differs in a fundamental way from USet.find(x) since it returns a meaningful result even
when there is no element in the set that is equal to x.
The distinction between the USet and SSet find(x) operations is very important
and is very often missed. The extra functionality provided by an SSet usually comes with
a price that includes both a larger running time and a higher implementation complexity.
For example, most of the SSet implementations discussed in this book all have find(x)
operations with running times that are logarithmic in the size of the set. On the other
hand, the implementation of a USet as a ChainedHashTable in Chapter 5 has a find(x)
operation that runs in constant expected time. When choosing which of these structures
to use, one should always use a USet unless the extra functionality offered by an SSet is
really needed.
1.2 Mathematical Background
In this section, we review some mathematical notations and tools used throughout this
book, including logarithms, big-Oh notation, and probability theory. This is intended to
be a review of these topics, not an introduction. Any reader who feels they are missing
this background is encouraged to read, and do exercises from, the appropriate sections of
the very good (and free) textbook on mathematics for computer science [50].
8
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
1.2.1 Exponentials and Logarithms
The expression bx denotes the number b raised to the power of x. If x is a positive integer,
then this is just the value of b multiplied by itself x − 1 times:
bx = b × b × · · · × b .
| {z }
x
When x is a negative integer, bx = 1/b−x . When x = 0, bx = 1. When b is not an integer, we
can still define exponentiation in terms of the exponential function ex (see below), which
is itself defined in terms of the exponential series, but this is best left to a calculus text.
In this book, the expression logb k denotes the base-b logarithm of k. That is, the
unique value x that satisfies
bx = k .
Most of the logarithms in this book are base 2 (binary logarithms), in which case we drop
the base, so that log k is shorthand for log2 k.
An informal, but useful, way to think about logarithms is to think of logb k as the
number of times we have to divide k by b before the result is less than or equal to 1. For
example, when one does binary search, each comparison reduces the number of possible
answers by a factor of 2. This is repeated until there is at most one possible answer. There-
fore, the number of comparison done by binary search when there are initially at most n+1
possible answers is at most dlog2 (n + 1)e.
Another logarithm that comes up several times in this book is the natural logarithm.
Here we use the notation ln k to denote loge k, where e — Euler’s constant — is given by
1 n
e = lim 1 + ≈ 2.71828 .
n→∞ n
The natural logarithm comes up frequently because it is the value of a particularly com-
mon integral:
Z k
1/x dx = ln k .
1
Two of the most common manipulations we do with logarithms are removing them from
an exponent:
blogb k = k
and changing the base of a logarithm:
loga k
logb k = .
loga b
9
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
For example, we can use these two manipulations to compare the natural and binary log-
arithms
log k log k
ln k = = = (ln 2)(log k) ≈ 0.693147 log k .
log e (ln e)/(ln 2)
1.2.2 Factorials
In one or two places in this book, the factorial function is used. For a non-negative integer
n, the notation n! (pronounced “n factorial”) is defined to mean
n! = 1 · 2 · 3 · · · · · n .
Factorials appear because n! counts the number of distinct permutations, i.e., orderings,
of n distinct elements. For the special case n = 0, 0! is defined as 1.
The quantity n! can be approximated using Stirling’s Approximation:
√ n
n
n! = 2πn eα(n) ,
e
where
1 1
< α(n) < .
12n + 1 12n
Stirling’s Approximation also approximates ln(n!):
1
ln(n!) = n ln n − n + ln(2πn) + α(n)
2
(In fact, Stirling’s Approximation is most easily proven by approximating ln(n!) = ln 1 +
Rn
ln 2 + · · · + ln n by the integral 1 ln n dn = n ln n − n + 1.)
Related to the factorial function are the binomial coefficients. For a non-negative
integer n and an integer k ∈ {0, . . . , n}, the notation nk denotes:
!
n n!
= .
k k!(n − k)!
n
The binomial coefficient k (pronounced “n choose k”) counts the number of subsets of an
n element set that have size k, i.e., the number of ways of choosing k distinct integers from
the set {1, . . . , n}.
1.2.3 Asymptotic Notation
When analyzing data structures in this book, we will want to talk about the running times
of various operations. The exact running times will, of course, vary from computer to
computer and even from run to run on an individual computer. When we talk about the
10
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
running time of an operation we are referring to the number of computer instructions
performed during the operation. Even for simple code, this quantity can be difficult to
compute exactly. Therefore, instead of analyzing running times exactly, we will use the
so-called big-Oh notation: For a function f (n), O(f (n)) denotes a set of functions,
O(f (n)) = {g(n) : there exists c > 0, and n0 such that g(n) ≤ c · f (n) for all n ≥ n0 } .
Thinking graphically, this set consists of the functions g(n) where c·f (n) starts to dominate
g(n) when n is sufficiently large.
We generally use asymptotic notation to simplify functions. For example, in place
of 5n log n + 8n − 200 we can write, simply, O(n log n). This is proven as follows:
5n log n + 8n − 200 ≤ 5n log n + 8n
≤ 5n log n + 8n log n for n ≥ 2 (so that log n ≥ 1)
≤ 13n log n
which demonstrates that the function f (n) = 5n log n+8n−200 is in the set O(n log n) using
the constants c = 13 and n0 = 2.
There are a number of useful shortcuts when using asymptotic notation. First:
O(nc1 ) ⊂ O(nc2 ) ,
for any c1 < c2 . Second: For any constants a, b, c > 0,
O(a) ⊂ O(log n) ⊂ O(nb ) ⊂ O(cn ) .
These inclusion relations can be multiplied by any positive value, and they still hold. For
example, multiplying by n yields:
O(n) ⊂ O(n log n) ⊂ O(n1+b ) ⊂ O(ncn ) .
Continuing in a long and distinguished tradition, we will abuse this notation by
writing things like f1 (n) = O(f (n)) when what we really mean is f1 (n) ∈ O(f (n)). We
will also make statements like “the running time of this operation is O(f (n))” when this
statement should be “the running time of this operation is a member of O(f (n)).” These
shortcuts are mainly to avoid awkward language and to make it easier to use asymptotic
notation within strings of equations.
A particularly strange example of this comes when we write statements like
T (n) = 2 log n + O(1) .
11
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
Again, this would be more correctly written as
T (n) ≤ 2 log n + [some member of O(1)] .
The expression O(1) also brings up another issue. Since there is no variable in this
expression, it may not be clear which variable is getting arbitrarily large. Without context,
there is no way to tell. In the example above, since the only variable in the rest of the
equation is n, we can assume that this should be read as T (n) = 2 log n + O(f (n)), where
f (n) = 1.
Big-Oh notation is not new or unique to computer science. It was used by number
theorist Paul Bachmann as early as 1894, but it is immensely useful in describing the
running times of computer algorithms. Consider a piece of code like the following:
Simple
void snippet() {
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
a[i] = i;
}
One execution of this method involves
• 1 assignment (inti = 0),
• n + 1 comparisons (i < n),
• n increments (i + +),
• n array offset calculations (a[i]), and
• n indirect assignments (a[i] = i).
So we could write this running time as
T (n) = a + b(n + 1) + cn + dn + en ,
where a, b, c, d, and e are constants that depend on the the machine running the code
and represent the time to perform assignments, comparisons, increment operations, array
offset calculations, and indirect assignments, respectively. If this is the expression for the
running time of two lines of code, then clearly this kind of analysis will not be tractable to
complicated code or algorithms. Using big-Oh notation, the running time simplifies down
to
T (n) = O(n) .
12
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
Not only is this more compact, but it also gives nearly as much information. The fact that
the running time depends on the constants a, b, c, d, and e in the above example means
that, in general, it will not be possible to compare two running times to know which is
faster without knowing the values of these constants. Even if we go through the effort of
determining these constants (say, through timing tests) then our conclusion will only be
valid for the machine we run our tests on.
Big-Oh notation allows us to reason at a much higher level, making it possible
to analyze much more complicated functions. If two algorithms have the same big-Oh
running time, then we won’t know which is faster, and there may not be a clear winner.
One may be faster on one machine and the other may be faster on a different machine.
However, if the two algorithms have a demonstrably different big-Oh running time, then
we can be certain that the one with the smaller running time will be faster for large enough
values of n.
An example of how big-Oh notation allows us to compare two different functions
is shown in Figure 1.5, which compares the rate of grown of f1 (n) = 15n versus f2 (n) =
2n log n. It might be that f1 (n) is the running time of a complicated linear time algorithm
while f2 (n) is the running time of a considerably simpler algorithm based on the divide-
and-conquer paradigm. This illustrates that, although f1 (n) is greater than f2 (n) for small
values of n, the opposite is true for large values of n. Eventually f1 (n) wins out, by an
increasingly wide margin. Analysis using big-Oh notation told us that this would happen,
since O(n) ⊂ O(n log n).
In a few cases, we will use asymptotic notation on functions with more than one
variable. There seems to be no standard for this, but for our purposes, the following
definition is sufficient:
g(n1 , . . . , nk ) : there exists c > 0, and z such that
O(f (n1 , . . . , nk )) =
g(n1 , . . . , nk ) ≤ c · f (n1 , . . . , nk )
.
for all n1 , . . . , nk such that g(n1 , . . . , nk ) ≥ z
This definition captures the situation we really care about: when the arguments n1 , . . . , nk
make g take on large values. This agrees with the univariate definition of O(f (n)) when
f (n) is an increasing function of n. The reader should be warned that, although this works
for our purposes, other texts may treat multivariate functions and asymptotic notation
differently.
13
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
1600
1400
1200
1000
f (n)
800
600
400
200 15n
2n log n
0
10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 100
n
300000
250000
200000
f (n)
150000
100000
50000
15n
2n log n
0
0 1000 2000 3000 4000 5000 6000 7000 8000 9000 10000
n
Figure 1.5: Plots of 15n versus 2n log n.
14
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
1.2.4 Randomization and Probability
Some of the data structures presented in this book are randomized; they make random
choices that are independent of the data being stored in them or the operations being
performed on them. For this reason, performing the same set of operations more than
once using these structures could result in different running times. When analyzing these
data structures we are interested in their average or expected running times.
Formally, the running time of an operation on a randomized data structure is a
random variable and we want to study its expected value. For a discrete random variable X
taking on values in some countable universe U , the expected value of X, denoted by E[X],
is given the by the formula
X
E[X] = x · Pr{X = x} .
x∈U
Here Pr{E} denotes the probability that the event E occurs. In all the examples in this
book, these probabilities are only with respect to whatever random choices are made by
the randomized data structure; there is no assumption that the data stored in the structure
is random or that the sequence of operations performed on the data structure is random.
One of the most important properties of expected values is linearity of expectation:
For any two random variables X and Y ,
E[X + Y ] = E[X] + E[Y ] .
More generally, for any random variables X1 , . . . , Xk ,
k k
X X
E
Xk =
E[Xi ] .
i=1 i=1
Linearity of expectation allows us to break down complicated random variables (like the
left hand sides of the above equations) into sums of simpler random variables (the right
hand sides).
A useful trick, that we will use repeatedly, is that of defining indicator random
variables. These binary variables are useful when we want to count something and are best
illustrated by an example. Suppose we toss a fair coin k times and we want to know the
expected number of times the coin comes up heads. Intuitively, we know the answer is
15
1. Introduction 1.2. Mathematical Background
k/2, but if we try to prove it using the definition of expected value, we get
k
X
E[X] = i · Pr{X = i}
i=0
Xk !
k k
= i· /2
i
i=0
k−1
X !
k−1 k
=k· /2
i
i=0
= k/2 .
This requires that we know enough to calculate that Pr{X = i} = ki /2k , that we know the
Pk k
binomial identity i ki = k k−1
i , and that we know the binomial identity i=0 i = 2 .
k
Using indicator variables and linearity of expectation makes things much easier:
For each i ∈ {1, . . . , k}, define the indicator random variable
1
if the ith coin toss is heads
Ii =
0 otherwise.
Then
E[Ii ] = (1/2)1 + (1/2)0 = 1/2 .
Pk
Now, X = i=1 Ii , so
k
X
E[X] = E Ii
i=1
k
X
= E[Ii ]
i=1
Xk
= 1/2
i=1
= k/2 .
This is a bit more long-winded, but doesn’t require that we know any magical identities
or compute any non-trivial probabilities. Even better: It agrees with the intuition that
we expect half the coins to come up heads precisely because each individual coin has
probability 1/2 of coming up heads.
16
1. Introduction 1.3. The Model of Computation
1.3 The Model of Computation
In this book, we will analyze the theoretical running times of operations on the data struc-
tures we study. To do this precisely, we need a mathematical model of computation. For
this, we use the w-bit word-RAM model. RAM stands for Random Access Machine. In this
model, we have access to a random access memory consisting of cells, each of which stores
a w-bit word. This implies a memory cell can represent, for example, any integer in the set
{0, . . . , 2w − 1}.
In the word-RAM model, basic operations on words take constant time. This in-
cludes arithmetic operations (+, −, ∗, /, %), comparisons (<, >, =, ≤, ≥), and bitwise boolean
operations (bitwise-AND, OR, and exclusive-OR).
Any cell can be read or written in constant time. Our computer’s memory is man-
aged by a memory management system from which we can allocate or deallocate a block
of memory of any size we like. Allocating a block of memory of size k takes O(k) time and
returns a reference to the newly-allocated memory block. This reference is small enough
to be represented by a single word.
The word-size, w, is a very important parameter of this model. The only assumption
we will make on w is that it is at least w ≥ log n, where n is the number of elements stored
in any of our data structures. This is a fairly modest assumption, since otherwise a word
is not even big enough to count the number of elements stored in the data structure.
Space is measured in words so that, when we talk about the amount of space used
by a data structure, we are referring to the number of words of memory used by the struc-
ture. All our data structures store values of a generic type T and we assume an element
of type T occupies one word of memory. (In reality, we are storing references to objects of
type T, and these references occupy only one word of memory.)
The w-bit word-RAM model is a fairly close match for the (32-bit) Java Virtual
Machine (JVM) when w = 32. The data structures presented in this book don’t use any
special tricks that are not implementable on the JVM and most other architectures.
1.4 Correctness, Time Complexity, and Space Complexity
When studying the performance of a data structure, there are three things that matter
most:
Correctness: The data structure should correctly implement its interface.
Time complexity: The running times of operations on the data structure should be as
17
1. Introduction 1.4. Correctness, Time Complexity, and Space Complexity
small as possible.
Space complexity: The data structure should use as little memory as possible.
In this introductory text, we will take correctness as a given; we won’t consider data
structures that give incorrect answers to queries or that don’t properly perform updates.
We will, however, see data structures that make an extra effort to keep space usage to a
minimum. This won’t usually affect the (asymptotic) running times of operations, but can
make the data structures a little slower in practice.
When studying running times in the context of data structure we tend to come
across three different kinds of running time guarantees:
Worst-case running times: These are the strongest kind of running time guarantees. If
a data structure operation has a worst-case running time of f (n), then one of these
operations never takes longer than f (n) time.
Amortized running times: If we say that the amortized running time of an operation in a
data structure is f (n), this means that the cost of a typical operation is at most f (n).
More precisely, if a data structure has an amortized running time of f (n), then a
sequence of m operations takes at most mf (n) time. Some individual operations may
take more than f (n) time but the average, over the entire sequence of operations, is
at most f (n).
Expected running times: If we say that the expected running time of an operation on a
data structure is f (n), this means that the actual running time is a random variable
(see Section 1.2.4) and the expected value of this random variable is at most f (n). The
randomization here is with respect to random choices made by the data structure.
To understand the difference between worst-case, amortized, and expected running
times, it helps to consider a financial example. Consider the cost buying a house.
Worst-case versus amortized cost: Suppose that a home costs $120 000. In order to
buy this home, we might get a 120 month (10 year) mortgage with monthly payments of
$1 200 per month. In this case, the worst-case monthly cost of paying this mortgage is
$1 200 per month.
If we have enough cash on hand, we might choose to buy the house outright, with
one payment of $120 000. In this case, over a period of 10 years, the amortized monthly
18
1. Introduction 1.5. Code Samples
cost of buying this house is
$120 000/120 months = $1 000 per month .
This is much less than the $1 200 per month we would have to pay if we took out a mort-
gage.
Worst-case versus expected cost: Next, consider the issue of fire insurance on our
$120 000 home. By studying hundreds of thousands of cases, insurance companies have
determined that the expected amount of fire damage caused to a home like ours is $10 per
month. This is a very small number, since most homes never have fires, a few homes may
have some small fires that cause a bit of smoke damage, and a tiny number of homes burn
right to their foundations. Based on this information, the insurance company charges $15
per month for fire insurance.
Now it’s decision time. Should we pay the $15 worst-case monthly cost for fire
insurance or should we gamble and self-insure at an expected cost of $10 per month?
Clearly, the $10 per month cost less in expectation, but we have to be able to accept the
possibility that actual cost may be much higher. In the unlikely event that the entire house
burns down, the actual cost will be $120 000.
These financial examples also offer insight into why we sometimes settle for an
amortized or expected running time over a worst-case running time. It is often possible to
get a lower expected or amortized running time than worst-case running time. At the very
least, it is very often possible to get a much simpler data structure if one is willing to settle
for amortized or expected running times.
1.5 Code Samples
The code samples in this book are written in the Java programming language. However
to make the book accessible even to readers not familiar with all of Java’s constructs and
keywords, the code samples have been simplified. For example, a reader won’t find any of
the keywords public, protected, private, or static. A reader also won’t find much dis-
cussion about class hierarchies. Which interfaces a particular class implements or which
class it extends, if relevant to the discussion, will be clear from the accompanying text.
These conventions should make most of the code samples understandable by any-
one with a background in any of the languages from the ALGOL tradition, including B,
C, C++, C#, D, Java, JavaScript, and so on. Readers who want the full details of all imple-
mentations are encouraged to look at the Java source code that accompanies this book.
19
1. Introduction 1.6. List of Data Structures
List implementations
get(i)/set(i, x) add(i, x)/remove(i)
ArrayStack O(1) O(1 + n − i)A § 2.1
ArrayDeque O(1) O(1 + min{i, n − i})A § 2.4
DualArrayDeque O(1) O(1 + min{i, n − i})A § 2.5
RootishArrayStack O(1) O(1 + n − i)A § 2.6
DLList O(1 + min{i, n − i}) O(1 + min{i, n − i}) § 3.2
SEList O(1 + min{i, n − i}/b) O(b + min{i, n − i}/b)A § 3.3
SkiplistList O(log n)E O(log n)E § 4.3
USet implementations
find(x) add(x)/remove(x)
ChainedHashTable O(1)E O(1)A,E § 5.1
LinearHashTable O(1)E O(1)A,E § 5.2
A Denotes an amortized running time.
E Denotes an expected running time.
Table 1.1: Summary of List and USet implementations.
This book mixes mathematical analysis of running times with Java source code for
the algorithms being analyzed. This means that some equations contain variables also
found in the source code. These variables are typeset consistently, both within the source
code and within equations. The most common such variable is the variable n that, without
exception, always refers to the number of items currently stored in the data structure.
1.6 List of Data Structures
Tables 1.1 and 1.2 summarizes the performance of data structures in this book that im-
plement each of the interfaces, List, USet, and SSet, described in Section 1.1. Figure 1.6
shows the dependencies between various chapters in this book. A dashed arrow indicates
only a weak-dependency, in which only a small part of the chapter depends on a previous
chapter or only the main results of the previous chapter.
20
1. Introduction 1.6. List of Data Structures
SSet implementations
find(x) add(x)/remove(x)
SkiplistSSet O(log n)E O(log n)E § 4.2
Treap O(log n)E O(log n)E § 7.2
ScapegoatTree O(log n) O(log n)A § 8.1
RedBlackTree O(log n) O(log n) § 9.2
BinaryTrieI O(w) O(w) § 13.1
XFastTrieI O(log w)A,E O(w)A,E § 13.2
YFastTrieI O(log w)A,E O(log w)A,E § 13.3
BTree O(log n) O(B + log n)A § 14.2
BTreeX O(logB n) O(logB n) § 14.2
(Priority) Queue implementations
findMin() add(x)/remove()
BinaryHeap O(1) O(log n)A § 10.1
MeldableHeap O(1) O(log n)E § 10.2
I This structure can only store w-bit integer data.
X This denotes the running time in the external-memory
model; see Chapter 14.
Table 1.2: Summary of SSet and priority Queue implementations.
21
1. Introduction 1.6. List of Data Structures
1. Introduction
2. Array-based lists 3. Linked lists
3.3 Space-efficient linked lists
5. Hash tables
4. Skiplists
6. Binary trees 7. Random binary search trees 11. Sorting algorithms
11.1.2. Quicksort
8. Scapegoat trees 11.1.3. Heapsort
9. Red-black trees
10. Heaps
12. Graphs
13. Data structures for integers
14. External-memory searching
Figure 1.6: The dependencies between chapters in this book.
22
1. Introduction 1.7. Discussion and Exercises
1.7 Discussion and Exercises
The List, USet, and SSet interfaces described in Section 1.1 are influenced by the Java Col-
lections Framework [54]. These are essentially simplified versions of the List, Set/Map,
and SortedSet/SortedMap interfaces found in the Java Collections Framework. Indeed,
the accompanying source code includes wrapper classes for making USet and SSet imple-
mentations into Set, Map, SortedSet, and SortedMap implementations.
For a superb (and free) treatment of the mathematics discussed in this chapter, in-
cluding asymptotic notation, logarithms, factorials, Stirling’s approximation, basic prob-
ability, and lots more, see the textbook by Leyman, Leighton, and Meyer [50]. For a gen-
tle calculus text that includes formal definitions of exponentials and logarithms, see the
(freely available) classic text by Thompson [71].
For more information on basic probability, especially as it relates to computer sci-
ence, see the textbook by Ross [65]. Another good reference, that covers both asymptotic
notation and probability, is the textbook by Graham, Knuth, and Patashnik [37].
Readers wanting to brush up on their Java programming can find many Java tuto-
rials online [56].
Exercise 1.1. This exercise is designed to help get the reader familiar with choosing the
right data structure for the right problem. If implemented, the parts of this exercise should
be done by making use of an implementation of the relevant interface (Stack, Queue,
Deque, USet, or SSet) provided by the Java Collections Framework.
Solve the following problems by reading a text file one line at a time and perform-
ing operations on each line in the appropriate data structure(s). Your implementations
should be fast enough that even files containing a million lines can be processed in a few
seconds.
1. Read the input one line at a time and then write the lines out in reverse order, so that
the last input line is printed first, then the second last input line, and so on.
2. Read the first 50 lines of input and then write them out in reverse order. Read the
next 50 lines and then write them out in reverse order. Do this until there are no
more lines left to read, at which point any remaining lines should be output in re-
verse order.
In other words, your output will start with the 50th line, then the 49th, then the 48th,
and so on down to the first line. This will be followed by the 100th line, followed by
23
1. Introduction 1.7. Discussion and Exercises
the 99th, and so on down to the 51st line. And so on.
Your code should never have to store more than 50 lines at any given time.
3. Read the input one line at a time. At any point after reading the first 42 lines, if some
line is blank (i.e., a string of length 0) then output the line that occured 42 lines prior
to that one. For example, if Line 242 is blank, then your program should output line
200. This program should be implemented so that it never stores more than 43 lines
of the input at any given time.
4. Read the input one line at a time and write each line to the output if it is not a
duplicate of some previous input line. Take special care so that a file with a lot of
duplicate lines does not use more memory than what is required for the number of
unique lines.
5. Read the input one line at a time and write each line to the output only if you have
already read this line before. (The end result is that you remove the first occurrence
of each line.) Take special care so that a file with a lot of duplicate lines does not use
more memory than what is required for the number of unique lines.
6. Read the entire input one line at a time. Then output all lines sorted by length, with
the shortest lines first. In the case where two lines have the same length, resolve their
order using the usual “sorted order.” Duplicate lines should be printed only once.
7. Do the same as the previous question except that duplicate lines should be printed
the same number of times that they appear in the input.
8. Read the entire input one line at a time and then output the even numbered lines
(starting with the first line, line 0) followed by the odd-numbered lines.
9. Read the entire input one line at a time and randomly permute the lines before out-
putting them. To be clear: You should not modify the contents of any line. Instead,
the same collection of lines should be printed, but in a random order.
Exercise 1.2. A Dyck word is a sequence of +1’s and -1’s with the property that sum of any
prefix of the sequence is never negative. Describe any relationship between Dyck words
and Stack push(x) and pop() operations.
Exercise 1.3. A matched string is a sequence of {, (, and [ characters that are properly
matched. For example, “{{()[]}}” is a matched string, but this “{{()]}” is not, since the second
24
1. Introduction 1.7. Discussion and Exercises
{ is matched with a ]. Show how to use a stack so that, given a string of length n, you can
determine if it is a matched string in O(n) time.
Exercise 1.4. Suppose you have a Stack, s, that supports only the push(x) and pop() oper-
ations. Show how, using only a FIFO Queue, q, you can reverse the order of all elements in
s.
Exercise 1.5. Using a USet, implement a Bag. A Bag is like a USet—it supports the
add(x), remove(x) and find(x) methods—but it allows duplicate elements to be stored.
The find(x) operation in a Bag returns some element (if any) that is equal to x. In addi-
tion, a Bag supports the findAll(x) operation that returns a list of all elements in the Bag
that are equal to x.
Exercise 1.6. From scratch, write and test implementations of the List, USet and SSet
interfaces. These do not have to be efficient. They can be used later to test the correctness
and performance of more efficient implementations. (The easiest way to do this is to store
the elements in an array.)
Exercise 1.7. Work to improve the performance of your implementations from the previ-
ous question using any tricks you can think of. Experiment and think about how you could
improve the performance of add(i, x) and remove(i) in your List implementation. Think
about how you could improve the performance of the find(x) operation in your USet and
SSet implementations. This exercise is designed to give you a feel for how difficult it can
be to obtain efficient implementations of these interfaces.
25
1. Introduction 1.7. Discussion and Exercises
26
Chapter 2
Array-Based Lists
In this chapter, we study implementations of the List and Queue interfaces where the
underlying data is stored in an array, called the backing array. The following table summa-
rizes the running times of operations for the data structures presented in this chapter:
get(i)/set(i, x) add(i, x)/remove(i)
ArrayStack O(1) O(n − i)
ArrayDeque O(1) O(min{i, n − i})
DualArrayDeque O(1) O(min{i, n − i})
RootishArrayStack O(1) O(n − i)
Data structures that work by storing data in a single array have many advantages
and limitations in common:
• Arrays offer constant time access to any value in the array. This is what allows get(i)
and set(i, x) to run in constant time.
• Arrays are not very dynamic. Adding or removing an element near the middle of a
list means that a large number of elements in the array need to be shifted to make
room for the newly added element or to fill in the gap created by the deleted element.
This is why the operations add(i, x) and remove(i) have running times that depend
on n and i.
• Arrays cannot expand or shrink. When the number of elements in the data struc-
ture exceeds the size of the backing array, a new array needs to be allocated and the
data from the old array needs to be copied into the new array. This is an expensive
operation.
27
2. Array-Based Lists 2.1. ArrayStack: Fast Stack Operations Using an Array
The third point is important. The running times cited in the table above do not include the
cost of growing and shrinking the backing array. We will see that, if carefully managed,
the cost of growing and shrinking the backing array does not add much to the cost of an
average operation. More precisely, if we start with an empty data structure, and perform
any sequence of m add(i, x) or remove(i) operations, then the total cost of growing and
shrinking the backing array, over the entire sequence of m operations is O(m). Although
some individual operations are more expensive, the amortized cost, when amortized over
all m operations, is only O(1) per operation.
2.1 ArrayStack: Fast Stack Operations Using an Array
An ArrayStack implements the list interface using an array a, called the backing array. The
list element with index i is stored in a[i]. At most times, a is larger than strictly necessary,
so an integer n is used to keep track of the number of elements actually stored in a. In this
way, the list elements are stored in a[0],. . . ,a[n − 1] and, at all times, a.length ≥ n.
ArrayStack
T[] a;
int n;
int size() {
return n;
}
2.1.1 The Basics
Accessing and modifying the elements of an ArrayStack using get(i) and set(i, x) is triv-
ial. After performing any necessary bounds-checking we simply return or set, respectively,
a[i].
ArrayStack
T get(int i) {
return a[i];
}
T set(int i, T x) {
T y = a[i];
a[i] = x;
return y;
}
The operations of adding and removing elements from an ArrayStack are illus-
trated in Figure 2.1. To implement the add(i, x) operation, we first check if a is already
28
2. Array-Based Lists 2.1. ArrayStack: Fast Stack Operations Using an Array
b r e d
add(2,e)
b r e e d
add(5,r)
b r e e d r
add(5,e)∗
b r e e d r
b r e e d e r
remove(4)
b r e e e r
remove(4)
b r e e r
remove(4)∗
b r e e
b r e e
set(2,i)
b r i e
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Figure 2.1: A sequence of add(i, x) and remove(i) operations on an ArrayStack. Arrows
denote elements being copied. Operations that result in a call to resize() are marked with
an asterisk.
full. If so, we call the method resize() to increase the size of a. How resize() is im-
plemented will be discussed later. For now, it is sufficient to know that, after a call to
resize(), we can be sure that a.length > n. With this out of the way, we now shift the
elements a[i], . . . , a[n − 1] right by one position to make room for x, set a[i] equal to x, and
increment n.
ArrayStack
void add(int i, T x) {
if (n + 1 > a.length) resize();
for (int j = n; j > i; j--)
a[j] = a[j-1];
a[i] = x;
n++;
}
29
2. Array-Based Lists 2.1. ArrayStack: Fast Stack Operations Using an Array
If we ignore the cost of the potential call to resize(), the cost of the add(i, x) operation is
proportional to the number of elements we have to shift to make room for x. Therefore the
cost of this operation (ignoring the cost of resizing a) is O(n − i + 1).
Implementing the remove(i) operation is similar. We shift the elements a[i + 1], . . . , a[n − 1]
left by one position (overwriting a[i]) and decrease the value of n. After doing this, we
check if n is getting much smaller than a.length by checking if a.length ≥ 3n. If so, we
call resize() to reduce the size of a.
ArrayStack
T remove(int i) {
T x = a[i];
for (int j = i; j < n-1; j++)
a[j] = a[j+1];
n--;
if (a.length >= 3*n) resize();
return x;
}
If we ignore the cost of the resize() method, the cost of a remove(i) operation is propor-
tional to the number of elements we shift, which is O(n − i).
2.1.2 Growing and Shrinking
The resize() method is fairly straightforward; it allocates a new array b whose size is 2n
and copies the n elements of a into the first n positions in b, and then sets a to b. Thus,
after a call to resize(), a.length = 2n.
ArrayStack
void resize() {
T[] b = newArray(Math.max(n*2,1));
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
b[i] = a[i];
}
a = b;
}
Analyzing the actual cost of the resize() operation is easy. It allocates an array b
of size 2n and copies the n elements of a into b. This takes O(n) time.
The running time analysis from the previous section ignored the cost of calls to
resize(). In this section we analyze this cost using a technique known as amortized anal-
ysis. This technique does not try to determine the cost of resizing during each individual
30
2. Array-Based Lists 2.1. ArrayStack: Fast Stack Operations Using an Array
add(i, x) and remove(i) operation. Instead, it considers the cost of all calls to resize()
during a sequence of m calls to add(i, x) or remove(i). In particular, we will show:
Lemma 2.1. If an empty ArrayList is created and any sequence of m ≥ 1 calls to add(i, x) and
remove(i) are performed, then the total time spent during all calls to resize() is O(m).
Proof. We will show that anytime resize() is called, the number of calls to add or remove
since the last call to resize() is at least n/2 − 1. Therefore, if ni denotes the value of n
during the ith call to resize() and r denotes the number of calls to resize(), then the total
number of calls to add(i, x) or remove(i) is at least
r
X
(ni /2 − 1) ≤ m ,
i=1
which is equivalent to
r
X
ni ≤ 2m + 2r .
i=1
On the other hand, the total time spent during all calls to resize() is
r
X
O(ni ) ≤ O(m + r) = O(m) ,
i=1
since r is not more than m. All that remains is to show that the number of calls to add(i, x)
or remove(i) between the (i − 1)th and the ith call to resize() is at least ni /2.
There are two cases to consider. In the first case, resize() is being called by
add(i, x) because the backing array a is full, i.e., a.length = n = ni . Consider the previ-
ous call to resize(): After this previous call, the size of a was a.length, but the number
of elements stored in a was at most a.length/2 = ni /2. But now the number of elements
stored in a is ni = a.length, so there must have been at least ni /2 calls to add(i, x) since the
previous call to resize().
The second case to consider is when resize() is being called by remove(i) because
a.length ≥ 3n = 3ni . Again, after the previous call to resize() the number of elements
stored in a was at least a.length/2 − 1.1 Now there are ni ≤ a.length/3 elements stored in
a. Therefore, the number of remove(i) operations since the last call to resize() is at least
a.length/2 − 1 − a.length/3 = a.length/6 − 1 = (a.length/3)/2 − 1 ≥ ni /2 − 1 .
1 The − 1 in this formula accounts for the special case that occurs when n = 0 and a.length = 1.
31
2. Array-Based Lists 2.2. FastArrayStack: An Optimized ArrayStack
In either case, the number of calls to add(i, x) or remove(i) that occur between the (i − 1)th
call to resize() and the ith call to resize() is at least ni /2 − 1, as required to complete the
proof.
2.1.3 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of an ArrayStack:
Theorem 2.1. An ArrayStack implements the List interface. Ignoring the cost of calls to
resize(), an ArrayStack supports the operations
• get(i) and set(i, x) in O(1) time per operation; and
• add(i, x) and remove(i) in O(1 + n − i) time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty ArrayStack, any sequence of m add(i, x) and remove(i)
operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to resize().
The ArrayStack is an efficient way to implement a Stack. In particular, we can
implement push(x) as add(n, x) and pop() as remove(n − 1), in which case these operations
will run in O(1) amortized time.
2.2 FastArrayStack: An Optimized ArrayStack
Much of the work done by an ArrayStack involves shifting (by add(i, x) and remove(i))
and copying (by resize()) of data. In the implementations shown above, this was done
using for loops. It turns out that many programming environments have specific func-
tions that are very efficient at copying and moving blocks of data. In the C program-
ming language, there are the memcpy(d, s, n) and memmove(d, s, n) functions. In C++ there is
the std :: copy(a0, a1, b) and algorithm. In Java there is the System.arraycopy(s, i, d, j, n)
method.
FastArrayStack
void resize() {
T[] b = newArray(Math.max(2*n,1));
System.arraycopy(a, 0, b, 0, n);
a = b;
}
void add(int i, T x) {
if (n + 1 > a.length) resize();
System.arraycopy(a, i, a, i+1, n-i);
a[i] = x;
n++;
32
2. Array-Based Lists 2.3. ArrayQueue: An Array-Based Queue
}
T remove(int i) {
T x = a[i];
System.arraycopy(a, i+1, a, i, n-i-1);
n--;
if (a.length >= 3*n) resize();
return x;
}
These functions are usually highly optimized and may even use special machine
instructions that can do this copying much faster than we could do using a for loop.
Although using these functions does not asymptotically decrease the running times, it
can still be a worthwhile optimization. In the Java implementations here, the use of
System.arraycopy(s, i, d, j, n) resulted in speedups of a factor between 2 and 3, depending
on the types of operations performed. Your mileage may vary.
2.3 ArrayQueue: An Array-Based Queue
In this section, we present the ArrayQueue data structure, which implements a FIFO (first-
in-first-out) queue; elements are removed (using the remove() operation) from the queue
in the same order they are added (using the add(x) operation).
Notice that an ArrayStack is a poor choice for an implementation of a FIFO queue.
The reason is that we must choose one end of the list to add to and then remove from the
other end. One of the two operations must work on the head of the list, which involves
calling add(i, x) or remove(i) with a value of i = 0. This gives a running time proportional
to n.
To obtain an efficient array-based implementation of a queue, we first notice that
the problem would be easy if we had an infinite array a. We could maintain one index j
that keeps track of the next element to remove and an integer n that counts the number of
elements in the queue. The queue elements would always be stored in
a[j], a[j + 1], . . . , a[j + n − 1] .
Initially, both j and n would be set to 0. To add an element, we would place it in a[j + n]
and increment n. To remove an element, we would remove it from a[j], increment j, and
decrement n.
Of course, the problem with this solution is that it requires an infinite array. An
ArrayQueue simulates this by using a finite array a and modular arithmetic. This is the kind
33
2. Array-Based Lists 2.3. ArrayQueue: An Array-Based Queue
of arithmetic used when we are talking about the time of day. For example 10 o’clock plus
5 hours gives 3 o’clock. Formally, we say that
10 + 5 = 15 ≡ 3 (mod 12) .
We read the latter part of this equation as “15 is congruent to 3 modulo 12.” We can also
treat mod as a binary operator, so that
15 mod 12 = 3 .
More generally, for an integer a and positive integer m, a mod m is the unique
integer r ∈ {0, . . . , m − 1} such that a = r + km for some integer k. Less formally, the value r is
the remainder we get when we divide a by m. In many programming languages, including
Java, the mod operator is represented using the % symbol.2
Modular arithmetic is useful for simulating an infinite array, since i mod a.length
always gives a value in the range 0, . . . , a.length − 1. Using modular arithmetic we can store
the queue elements at array locations
a[j%a.length], a[(j + 1)%a.length], . . . , a[(j + n − 1)%a.length] .
This treats a like a circular array in which array indices exceeding a.length − 1 “wrap
around” to the beginning of the array.
The only remaining thing to worry about is taking care that the number of elements
in the ArrayQueue does not exceed the size of a.
ArrayQueue
T[] a;
int j;
int n;
A sequence of add(x) and remove() operations on an ArrayQueue is illustrated in
Figure 2.2. To implement add(x), we first check if a is full and, if necessary, call resize()
to increase the size of a. Next, we store x in a[(j + n)%a.length] and increment n.
ArrayQueue
boolean add(T x) {
if (n + 1 > a.length) resize();
a[(j+n) % a.length] = x;
n++;
return true;
}
2 This is sometimes referred to as the brain-dead mod operator since it does not correctly implement the
mathematical mod operator when the first argument is negative.
34
2. Array-Based Lists 2.3. ArrayQueue: An Array-Based Queue
j = 2, n = 3 a b c
add(d)
j = 2, n = 4 a b c d
add(e)
j = 2, n = 5 e a b c d
remove()
j = 3, n = 4 e b c d
add(f)
j = 3, n = 5 e f b c d
add(g)
j = 3, n = 6 e f g b c d
add(h)∗
j = 0, n = 6 b c d e f g
j = 0, n = 7 b c d e f g h
remove()
j = 1, n = 6 c d e f g h
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Figure 2.2: A sequence of add(x) and remove(i) operations on an ArrayQueue. Arrows
denote elements being copied. Operations that result in a call to resize() are marked with
an asterisk.
35
2. Array-Based Lists 2.3. ArrayQueue: An Array-Based Queue
To implement remove() we first store a[j] so that we can return it later. Next,
we decrement n and increment j (modulo a.length) by setting j = (j + 1) mod a.length.
Finally, we return the stored value of a[j]. If necessary, we may call resize() to decrease
the size of a.
ArrayQueue
T remove() {
if (n == 0) throw new NoSuchElementException();
T x = a[j];
j = (j + 1) % a.length;
n--;
if (a.length >= 3*n) resize();
return x;
}
Finally, the resize() operation is very similar to the resize() operation of Array-
Stack. It allocates a new array b of size 2n and copies
a[j], a[(j + 1)%a.length], . . . , a[(j + n − 1)%a.length]
onto
b[0], b[1], . . . , b[n − 1]
and sets j = 0.
ArrayQueue
void resize() {
T[] b = newArray(Math.max(1,n*2));
for (int k = 0; k < n; k++)
b[k] = a[(j+k) % a.length];
a = b;
j = 0;
}
2.3.1 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the ArrayQueue data structure:
Theorem 2.2. An ArrayQueue implements the (FIFO) Queue interface. Ignoring the cost of
calls to resize(), an ArrayQueue supports the operations add(x) and remove() in O(1) time
per operation. Furthermore, beginning with an empty ArrayQueue, any sequence of m add(i, x)
and remove(i) operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to resize().
36
2. Array-Based Lists 2.4. ArrayDeque: Fast Deque Operations Using an Array
2.4 ArrayDeque: Fast Deque Operations Using an Array
The ArrayQueue from the previous section is a data structure for representing a sequence
that allows us to efficiently add to one end of the sequence and remove from the other end.
The ArrayDeque data structure allows for efficient addition and removal at both ends. This
structure implements the List interface using the same circular array technique used to
represent an ArrayQueue.
ArrayDeque
T[] a;
int j;
int n;
The get(i) and set(i, x) operations on an ArrayDeque are straightforward. They
get or set the array element a[(j + i) mod a.length].
ArrayDeque
T get(int i) {
return a[(j+i)%a.length];
}
T set(int i, T x) {
T y = a[(j+i)%a.length];
a[(j+i)%a.length] = x;
return y;
}
The implementation of add(i, x) is a little more interesting. As usual, we first check
if a is full and, if necessary, call resize() to resize a. Remember that we want this operation
to be fast when i is small (close to 0) or when i is large (close to n). Therefore, we check
if i < n/2. If so, we shift the elements a[0], . . . , a[i − 1] left by one position. Otherwise
(i ≥ n/2), we shift the elements a[i], . . . , a[n − 1] right by one position. See Figure 2.3 for an
illustration of add(i, x) and remove(x) operations on an ArrayDeque.
ArrayDeque
void add(int i, T x) {
if (n+1 > a.length) resize();
if (i < n/2) { // shift a[0],..,a[i-1] left one position
j = (j == 0) ? a.length - 1 : j - 1; // (j-1) mod a.length
for (int k = 0; k <= i-1; k++)
a[(j+k)%a.length] = a[(j+k+1)%a.length];
} else { // shift a[i],..,a[n-1] right one position
for (int k = n; k > i; k--)
a[(j+k)%a.length] = a[(j+k-1)%a.length];
37
2. Array-Based Lists 2.4. ArrayDeque: Fast Deque Operations Using an Array
j = 0, n = 8 a b c d e f g h
remove(2)
j = 1, n = 7 a b d e f g h
add(4,x)
j = 1, n = 8 a b d e x f g h
add(3,y)
j = 0, n = 9 a b d y e x f g h
add(4,z)
j = 11, n = 10 b d y z e x f g h a
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
Figure 2.3: A sequence of add(i, x) and remove(i) operations on an ArrayDeque. Arrows
denote elements being copied.
}
a[(j+i)%a.length] = x;
n++;
}
By doing the shifting in this way, we guarantee that add(i, x) never has to shift more
than min{i, n − i} elements. Thus, the running time of the add(i, x) operation (ignoring the
cost of a resize() operation) is O(1 + min{i, n − i}).
The remove(i) operation is similar. It either shifts elements a[0], . . . , a[i − 1] right
by one position or shifts the elements a[i + 1], . . . , a[n − 1] left by one position depending on
whether i < n/2. Again, this means that remove(i) never spends more than O(1+min{i, n−
i}) time to shift elements.
ArrayDeque
T remove(int i) {
T x = a[(j+i)%a.length];
if (i < n/2) { // shift a[0],..,[i-1] right one position
for (int k = i; k > 0; k--)
a[(j+k)%a.length] = a[(j+k-1)%a.length];
j = (j + 1) % a.length;
} else { // shift a[i+1],..,a[n-1] left one position
for (int k = i; k < n-1; k++)
a[(j+k)%a.length] = a[(j+k+1)%a.length];
}
n--;
if (3*n < a.length) resize();
38
2. Array-Based Lists 2.5. DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks
return x;
}
2.4.1 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the ArrayDeque data structure:
Theorem 2.3. An ArrayDeque implements the List interface. Ignoring the cost of calls to
resize(), an ArrayDeque supports the operations
• get(i) and set(i, x) in O(1) time per operation; and
• add(i, x) and remove(i) in O(1 + min{i, n − i}) time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty ArrayDeque, any sequence of m add(i, x) and remove(i)
operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to resize().
2.5 DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks
Next, we present another data structure, the DualArrayDeque that achieves the same per-
formance bounds as an ArrayDeque by using two ArrayStacks. Although the asymptotic
performance of the DualArrayDeque is no better than that of the ArrayDeque, it is still
worth studying since it offers a good example of how to make a sophisticated data struc-
ture by combining two simpler data structures.
A DualArrayDeque represents a list using two ArrayStacks. Recall that an Array-
Stack is fast when the operations on it modify elements near the end. A DualArrayDeque
places two ArrayStacks, called front and back, back-to-back so that operations are fast at
either end.
DualArrayDeque
List<T> front;
List<T> back;
A DualArrayDeque does not explicitly store the number, n, of elements it contains.
It doesn’t need to, since it contains n = front.size() + back.size() elements. Nevertheless,
when analyzing the DualArrayDeque we will still use n to denote the number of elements
it contains.
DualArrayDeque
int size() {
return front.size() + back.size();
}
39
2. Array-Based Lists 2.5. DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks
The front ArrayStack contains list elements with indices 0, . . . , front.size() − 1,
but stores them in reverse order. The back ArrayStack contains list elements with indices
front.size(), . . . , size() − 1 in the normal order. In this way, get(i) and set(i, x) translate
into appropriate calls to get(i) or set(i, x) on either front or back, which take O(1) time
per operation.
DualArrayDeque
T get(int i) {
if (i < front.size()) {
return front.get(front.size()-i-1);
} else {
return back.get(i-front.size());
}
}
T set(int i, T x) {
if (i < front.size()) {
return front.set(front.size()-i-1, x);
} else {
return back.set(i-front.size(), x);
}
}
Note that, if an index i < front.size(), then it corresponds to the element of front
at position front.size() − i − 1, since the elements of front are stored in reverse order.
Adding and removing elements from a DualArrayDeque is illustrated in Figure 2.4.
The add(i, x) operation manipulates either front or back, as appropriate:
DualArrayDeque
void add(int i, T x) {
if (i < front.size()) {
front.add(front.size()-i, x);
} else {
back.add(i-front.size(), x);
}
balance();
}
The add(i, x) method performs rebalancing of the two ArrayStacks front and
back, by calling the balance() method. The implementation of balance() is described be-
low, but for now it is sufficient to know that balance() ensures that, unless size() < 2,
front.size() and back.size() do not differ by more than a factor of 3. In particular,
3 · front.size() ≥ back.size() and 3 · back.size() ≥ front.size().
40
2. Array-Based Lists 2.5. DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks
front back
a b c d
add(3,x)
a b c x d
add(4,y)
a b c x y d
remove(0)∗
b c x y d
b c x y d
4 3 2 1 0 0 1 2 3 4
Figure 2.4: A sequence of add(i, x) and remove(i) operations on a DualArrayDeque. Ar-
rows denote elements being copied. Operations that result in a rebalancing by balance()
are marked with an asterisk.
Next we analyze the cost of add(i, x), ignoring the cost of the balance() operation.
If i < front.size(), then add(i, x) becomes front.add(front.size() − i − 1, x). Since front
is an ArrayStack, the cost of this is
O(front.size() − (front.size() − i − 1) + 1) = O(i + 1) . (2.1)
On the other hand, if i ≥ front.size(), then add(i, x) becomes back.add(i − front.size(), x).
The cost of this is
O(back.size() − (i − front.size()) + 1) = O(n − i + 1) . (2.2)
Notice that the first case (2.1) occurs when i < n/4. The second case (2.2) occurs
when i ≥ 3n/4. When n/4 ≤ i < 3n/4, we can’t be sure whether the operation affects front
or back, but in either case, the operation takes O(n) = O(i) = O(n − i) time, since i ≥ n/4
and n − i > n/4. Summarizing the situation, we have
O(1 + i) if i < n/4
Running time of add(i, x) ≤
O(n) if n/4 ≤ i < 3n/4
O(1 + n − i) if i ≥ 3n/4
Thus, the running time of add(i, x) (ignoring the cost of the call to balance()) is O(1 +
min{i, n − i}).
41
2. Array-Based Lists 2.5. DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks
The remove(i) operation, and its analysis, is similar to the add(i, x) operation.
DualArrayDeque
T remove(int i) {
T x;
if (i < front.size()) {
x = front.remove(front.size()-i-1);
} else {
x = back.remove(i-front.size());
}
balance();
return x;
}
2.5.1 Balancing
Finally, we study the balance() operation performed by add(i, x) and remove(i). This
operation is used to ensure that neither front nor back gets too big (or too small). It
ensures that, unless there are fewer than 2 elements, each of front and back contain at
least n/4 elements. If this is not the case, then it moves elements between them so that
front and back contain exactly bn/2c elements and dn/2e elements, respectively.
DualArrayDeque
void balance() {
int n = size();
if (3*front.size() < back.size()) {
int s = n/2 - front.size();
List<T> l1 = newStack();
List<T> l2 = newStack();
l1.addAll(back.subList(0,s));
Collections.reverse(l1);
l1.addAll(front);
l2.addAll(back.subList(s, back.size()));
front = l1;
back = l2;
} else if (3*back.size() < front.size()) {
int s = front.size() - n/2;
List<T> l1 = newStack();
List<T> l2 = newStack();
l1.addAll(front.subList(s, front.size()));
l2.addAll(front.subList(0, s));
Collections.reverse(l2);
l2.addAll(back);
front = l1;
back = l2;
42
2. Array-Based Lists 2.5. DualArrayDeque: Building a Deque from Two Stacks
}
}
There is not much to analyze. If the balance() operation does rebalancing, then it
moves O(n) elements and this takes O(n) time. This is bad, since balance() is called with
each call to add(i, x) and remove(i). However, the following lemma shows that, on average,
balance() only spends a constant amount of time per operation.
Lemma 2.2. If an empty DualArrayDeque is created and any sequence of m ≥ 1 calls to
add(i, x) and remove(i) are performed, then the total time spent during all calls to balance()
is O(m).
Proof. We will show that, if balance() is forced to shift elements, then the number of
add(i, x) and remove(i) operations since the last time balance() shifted any elements is at
least n/2 − 1. As in the proof of Lemma 2.1, this is sufficient to prove that the total time
spent by balance() is O(m).
We will perform our analysis using a technique knows as the potential method. De-
fine the potential, Φ, of the DualArrayDeque as the difference in size between front and
back:
Φ = |front.size() − back.size()| .
The interesting thing about this potential is that a call to add(i, x) or remove(i) that does
not do any balancing can increase the potential by at most 1.
Observe that, immediately after a call to balance() that shifts elements, the poten-
tial, Φ0 , is at most 1, since
Φ0 = |bn/2c − dn/2e| ≤ 1 .
Consider the situation immediately before a call to balance() that shifts elements
and suppose, without loss of generality, that balance() is shifting elements because 3front.size() <
back.size(). Notice that, in this case,
n = front.size() + back.size()
< back.size()/3 + back.size()
4
= back.size()
3
43
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
Furthermore, the potential at this point in time is
Φ1 = back.size() − front.size()
> back.size() − back.size()/3
2
= back.size()
3
2 3
> × n
3 4
= n/2
Therefore, the number of calls to add(i, x) or remove(i) since the last time balance()
shifted elements is at least Φ1 − Φ0 > n/2 − 1. This completes the proof.
2.5.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of a DualArrayStack
Theorem 2.4. A DualArrayDeque implements the List interface. Ignoring the cost of calls to
resize() and balance(), a DualArrayDeque supports the operations
• get(i) and set(i, x) in O(1) time per operation; and
• add(i, x) and remove(i) in O(1 + min{i, n − i}) time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty DualArrayDeque, any sequence of m add(i, x) and
remove(i) operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to resize() and
balance().
2.6 RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
One of the drawbacks of all previous data structures in this chapter is that, because they
store their data in one or two arrays, and they avoid resizing these arrays too often, the
arrays are frequently not very full. For example, immediately after a resize() operation
on an ArrayStack, the backing array a is only half full. Even worse, there are times when
only 1/3 of a contains data.
In this section, we discuss a data structure, the RootishArrayStack, that addresses
√
the problem of wasted space. The RootishArrayStack stores n elements using O( n)
√
arrays. In these arrays, at most O( n) array locations are unused at any time. All remaining
√
array locations are used to store data. Therefore, these data structures waste at most O( n)
space when storing n elements.
44
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
blocks
a b c d e f g h
add(2,x)
a b x c d e f g h
remove(1)
a x c d e f g h
remove(7)
a x c d e f g
remove(6)
a x c d e f
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Figure 2.5: A sequence of add(i, x) and remove(i) operations on a RootishArrayStack.
Arrows denote elements being copied.
A RootishArrayStack stores its elements in a list of r arrays called blocks that are
numbered 0, 1, . . . , r − 1. See Figure 2.5. Block b contains b + 1 elements. Therefore, all r
blocks contain a total of
1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + r = r(r + 1)/2
elements. The above formula can be obtained as shown in Figure 2.6.
RootishArrayStack
List<T[]> blocks;
int n;
The elements of the list are laid out in the blocks as we might expect. The list
element with index 0 is stored in block 0, the elements with list indices 1 and 2 are stored
in block 1, the elements with list indices 3, 4, and 5 are stored in block 2, and so on. The
main problem we have to address is that of determining, given an index i, which block
contains i as well as the index corresponding to i within that block.
Determining the index of i within its block turns out to be easy. If index i is in
block b, then the number of elements in blocks 0, . . . , b−1 is b(b+1)/2. Therefore, i is stored
at location
j = i − b(b + 1)/2
45
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
...
..
.
r ..
.
..
.
...
r+1
Figure 2.6: The number of white squares is 1 + 2 + 3 + · · · + r. The number of shaded squares
is the same. Together the white and shaded squares make a rectangle consisting of r(r + 1)
squares.
within block b. Somewhat more challenging is the problem of determining the value of
b. The number of elements that have indices less than or equal to i is i + 1. On the other
hand, the number of elements in blocks 0,. . . ,b is (b+1)(b+2)/2. Therefore, b is the smallest
integer such that
(b + 1)(b + 2)/2 ≥ i + 1 .
We can rewrite this equation as
b2 + 3b − 2i ≥ 0 .
√
The corresponding quadratic equation b2 +3b−2i = 0 has two solutions: b = (−3+ 9 + 8i)/2
√
and b = (−3 − 9 + 8i)/2. The second solution makes no sense in our application since it
√
always gives a negative value. Therefore, we obtain the solution b = (−3 + 9 + 8i)/2. In
general, this solution is not an integer, but going back to our inequality, we want the small-
√
est integer b such that b ≥ (−3 + 9 + 8i)/2. This is simply
l √ m
b = (−3 + 9 + 8i)/2 .
RootishArrayStack
int i2b(int i) {
double db = (-3.0 + Math.sqrt(9 + 8*i)) / 2.0;
int b = (int)Math.ceil(db);
return b;
}
With this out of the way, the get(i) and set(i, x) methods are straightforward. We
first compute the appropriate block b and the appropriate index j within the block and
46
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
then perform the appropriate operation:
RootishArrayStack
T get(int i) {
int b = i2b(i);
int j = i - b*(b+1)/2;
return blocks.get(b)[j];
}
T set(int i, T x) {
int b = i2b(i);
int j = i - b*(b+1)/2;
T y = blocks.get(b)[j];
blocks.get(b)[j] = x;
return y;
}
If we use any of the data structures in this chapter for representing the blocks list,
then get(i) and set(i, x) will each run in constant time.
The add(i, x) method will, by now, look familiar. We first check if our data structure
is full, by checking if the number of blocks r is such that r(r + 1)/2 = n and, if so, we call
grow() to add another block. With this done, we shift elements with indices i, . . . , n − 1 to
the right by one position to make room for the new element with index i:
RootishArrayStack
void add(int i, T x) {
int r = blocks.size();
if (r*(r+1)/2 < n + 1) grow();
n++;
for (int j = n-1; j > i; j--)
set(j, get(j-1));
set(i, x);
}
The grow() method does what we expect. It adds a new block:
RootishArrayStack
void grow() {
blocks.add(newArray(blocks.size()+1));
}
Ignoring the cost of the grow() operation, the cost of an add(i, x) operation is dom-
inated by the cost of shifting and is therefore O(1 + n − i), just like an ArrayStack.
47
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
The remove(i) operation is similar to add(i, x). It shifts the elements with indices
i + 1, . . . , n left by one position and then, if there is more than one empty block, it calls the
shrink() method to remove all but one of the unused blocks:
RootishArrayStack
T remove(int i) {
T x = get(i);
for (int j = i; j < n-1; j++)
set(j, get(j+1));
n--;
int r = blocks.size();
if ((r-2)*(r-1)/2 >= n) shrink();
return x;
}
RootishArrayStack
void shrink() {
int r = blocks.size();
while (r > 0 && (r-2)*(r-1)/2 >= n) {
blocks.remove(blocks.size()-1);
r--;
}
}
Once again, ignoring the cost of the shrink() operation, the cost of a remove(i)
operation is dominated by the cost of shifting and is therefore O(n − i).
2.6.1 Analysis of Growing and Shrinking
The above analysis of add(i, x) and remove(i) does not account for the cost of grow() and
shrink(). Note that, unlike the ArrayStack.resize() operation, grow() and shrink() do not
do any copying of data. They only allocate or free an array of size r. In some environments,
this takes only constant time, while in others, it may require time proportional to r.
We note that, immediately after a call to grow() or shrink(), the situation is clear.
The final block is completely empty and all other blocks are completely full. Another
call to grow() or shrink() will not happen until at least r − 1 elements have been added or
removed. Therefore, even if grow() and shrink() take O(r) time, this cost can be amortized
over at least r−1 add(i, x) or remove(i) operations, so that the amortized cost of grow() and
shrink() is O(1) per operation.
48
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
2.6.2 Space Usage
Next, we analyze the amount of extra space used by a RootishArrayStack. In particular,
we want to count any space used by a RootishArrayStack that is not an array element
currently used to hold a list element. We call all such space wasted space.
The remove(i) operation ensures that a RootishArrayStack never has more than
2 blocks that are not completely full. The number of blocks, r, used by a RootishArray-
Stack that stores n elements therefore satisfies
(r − 2)(r − 1) ≤ n .
Again, using the quadratic equation on this gives
√ √
r ≤ (3 + 1 + 4n)/2 = O( n) .
The last two blocks have sizes r and r − 1, so the space wasted by these two blocks is at
√
most 2r−1 = O( n). If we store the blocks in (for example) an ArrayList, then the amount
√
of space wasted by the List that stores those r blocks is also O(r) = O( n). The other space
needed for storing n and other accounting information is O(1). Therefore, the total amount
√
of wasted space in a RootishArrayStack is O( n).
Next, we argue that this space usage is optimal for any data structure that starts
out empty and can support the addition of one item at a time. More precisely, we will
show that, at some point during the addition of n items, the data structure is wasting an
√
amount of space at least in n (though it may be only wasted for a moment).
Suppose we start with an empty data structure and we add n items one at a time.
At the end of this process, all n items are stored in the structure and they are distributed
√
among a collection of r memory blocks. If r ≥ n, then the data structure must be using
r pointers (or references) to keep track of these r blocks, and this is wasted space. On the
√
other hand, if r < n then, by the pigeonhole principle, some block must have size at least
√
n/r > n. Consider the moment at which this block was first allocated. Immediately after
√
it was allocated, this block was empty, and was therefore wasting n space. Therefore, at
√
some point in time during the insertion of n elements, the data structure was wasting n
space.
2.6.3 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the RootishArrayStack data struc-
ture:
49
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
Theorem 2.5. A RootishArrayStack implements the List interface. Ignoring the cost of calls
to grow() and shrink(), a RootishArrayStack supports the operations
• get(i) and set(i, x) in O(1) time per operation; and
• add(i, x) and remove(i) in O(1 + n − i) time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty RootishArrayStack, any sequence of m add(i, x) and
remove(i) operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to grow() and shrink().
The space (measured in words)3 used by a RootishArrayStack that stores n elements
√
is n + O( n).
2.6.4 Computing Square Roots
A reader who has had some exposure to models of computation may notice that the Rootish-
ArrayStack, as described above, does not fit into the usual word-RAM model of compu-
tation (Section 1.3) because it requires taking square roots. The square root operation is
generally not considered a basic operation and is therefore not usually part of the word-
RAM model.
In this section, we take time to show that the square root operation can be imple-
√
mented efficiently. In particular, we show that for any integer x ∈ {0, . . . , n}, b xc can be
√
computed in constant-time, after O( n) preprocessing that creates two arrays of length
√
O( n). The following lemma shows that we can reduce the problem of computing the
square root of x to the square root of a related value x0 .
√ √ √
Lemma 2.3. Let x ≥ 1 and let x0 = x − a, where 0 ≤ a ≤ x. Then x0 ≥ x − 1.
Proof. It suffices to show that
q
√ √
x− x ≥ x−1 .
Square both sides of this inequality to get
√ √
x− x ≥ x−2 x+1
and gather terms to get
√
x≥1
which is clearly true for any x ≥ 1.
3 Recall Section 1.3 for a discussion of how memory is measured.
50
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
Start by restricting the problem a little, and assume that 2r ≤ x < 2r+1 , so that
blog xc = r, i.e., x is an integer having r + 1 bits in its binary representation. We can take
√ √
x0 = x − (x mod 2br/2c ). Now, x0 satisfies the conditions of Lemma 2.3, so x − x0 ≤ 1.
Furthermore, x0 has all of its lower-order br/2c bits equal to 0, so there are only
√
2r+1−br/2c ≤ 4 · 2r/2 ≤ 4 x
possible values of x0 . This means that we can use an array, sqrttab, that stores the value
√
of b x0 c for each possible value of x0 . A little more precisely, we have
j√ k
sqrttab[i] = i2br/2c .
√
In this way, sqrttab[i] is within 2 of x for all x ∈ {i2br/2c , . . . , (i +1)2br/2c −1}. Stated another
√ √ √
way, the array entry s = sqrttab[x>>br/2c] is either equal to b xc, b xc − 1, or b xc − 2.
√
From s we can determine the value of b xc by incrementing s until (s + 1)2 > x.
FastSqrt
int sqrt(int x, int r) {
int s = sqrtab[x>>r/2];
while ((s+1)*(s+1) <= x) s++; // executes at most twice
return s;
}
Now, this only works for x ∈ {2r , . . . , 2r+1 − 1} and sqrttab is a special table that
only works for a particular value of r = blog xc. To overcome this, we could compute blog nc
different sqrttab arrays, one for each possible value of blog xc. The sizes of these tables
√
form an exponential sequence whose largest value is at most 4 n, so the total size of all
√
tables is O( n).
However, it turns out that more than one sqrttab array is unnecessary; we only
need one sqrttab array for the value r = blog nc. Any value x with log x = r0 < r can be
0
upgraded by multiplying x by 2r−r and using the equation
√ 0 √
2r−r x = 2(r−r )/2 x .
0
0
The quantity 2r−r x is in the range {2r , . . . , 2r+1 − 1} so we can look up its square root in
√
sqrttab. The following code implements this idea to compute b xc for all non-negative
integers x in the range {0, . . . , 230 − 1} using an array, sqrttab, of size 216 .
FastSqrt
int sqrt(int x) {
int rp = log(x);
int upgrade = ((r-rp)/2) * 2;
51
2. Array-Based Lists 2.6. RootishArrayStack: A Space-Efficient Array Stack
int xp = x << upgrade; // xp has r or r-1 bits
int s = sqrtab[xp>>(r/2)] >> (upgrade/2);
while ((s+1)*(s+1) <= x) s++; // executes at most twice
return s;
}
Something we have taken for granted thus far is the question of how to compute
r0 = blog xc. Again, this is a problem that can be solved with an array, logtab, of size
2r/2 . In this case, the code is particularly simple, since blog xc is just the index of the
most significant 1 bit in the binary representation of x. This means that, for x > 2r/2 , we
can right-shift the bits of x by r/2 positions before using it as an index into logtab. The
following code does this using an array logtab of size 216 to compute blog xc for all x in
the range {1, . . . , 232 − 1}
FastSqrt
int log(int x) {
if (x >= halfint)
return 16 + logtab[x>>>16];
return logtab[x];
}
Finally, for completeness, we include the following code that initializes logtab and
sqrttab:
FastSqrt
void inittabs() {
sqrtab = new int[1<<(r/2)];
logtab = new int[1<<(r/2)];
for (int d = 0; d < r/2; d++)
Arrays.fill(logtab, 1<<d, 2<<d, d);
int s = 1<<(r/4); // sqrt(2ˆ(r/2))
for (int i = 0; i < 1<<(r/2); i++) {
if ((s+1)*(s+1) <= i << (r/2)) s++; // sqrt increases
sqrtab[i] = s;
}
}
To summarize, the computations done by the i2b(i) method can be implemented
√
in constant time on the word-RAM using O( n) extra memory to store the sqrttab and
logtab arrays. These arrays can be rebuilt when n increases or decreases by a factor of 2,
and the cost of this rebuilding can be amortized over the number of add(i, x) and remove(i)
operations that caused the change in n in the same way that the cost of resize() is analyzed
in the ArrayStack implementation.
52
2. Array-Based Lists 2.7. Discussion and Exercises
2.7 Discussion and Exercises
Most of the data structures described in this chapter are folklore. They can be found in im-
plementations dating back over 30 years. For example, implementations of stacks, queues,
and deques which generalize easily to the ArrayStack, ArrayQueue and ArrayDeque struc-
tures described here are discussed by Knuth [46, Section 2.2.2].
Brodnik et al. [13] seem to have been the first to describe the RootishArrayStack
√
and prove a n lower-bound like that in Section 2.6.2. They also present a different struc-
ture that uses a more sophisticated choice of block sizes in order to avoid computing square
roots in the i2b(i) method. With their scheme, the block containing i is block blog(i + 1)c,
which is just the index of the leading 1 bit in the binary representation of i + 1. Some com-
puter architectures provide an instruction for computing the index of the leading 1-bit in
an integer.
A structure related to the RootishArrayStack is the 2-level tiered-vector of Goodrich
and Kloss [35]. This structure supports get(i, x) and set(i, x) in constant time and add(i, x)
√
and remove(i) in O( n) time. These running times are similar to what can be achieved
with the more careful implementation of a RootishArrayStack discussed in Exercise 2.11.
Exercise 2.1. In the ArrayStack implementation, after the first call to remove(i), the back-
ing array, a, contains n + 1 non-null values even though the ArrayStack only contains n
elements. Where is the extra non-null value? Discuss any consequences this might have
on the Java Runtime Environment’s memory manager.
Exercise 2.2. The List method addAll(i, c) inserts all elements of the Collection c into
the list at position i. (The add(i, x) method is a special case where c = {x}.) Explain why, for
the data structures in this chapter, it is not efficient to implement addAll(i, c) by repeated
calls to add(i, x). Design and implement a more efficient implementation.
Exercise 2.3. Design and implement a RandomQueue. This is an implementation of the
Queue interface in which the remove() operation removes an element that is chosen uni-
formly at random among all the elements currently in the queue. (Think of a RandomQueue
as a bag in which we can add elements or reach in and blindly remove some random ele-
ment.) The add(x) and remove() operations in a RandomQueue should run in constant time
per operation.
Exercise 2.4. Design and implement a Treque (triple-ended queue). This is a List imple-
mentation in which get(i) and set(i, x) run in constant time and add(i, x) and remove(i)
53
2. Array-Based Lists 2.7. Discussion and Exercises
run in time
O(1 + min{i, n − i, |n/2 − i|}) .
In other words, modifications are fast if they are near either end or near the middle of the
list.
Exercise 2.5. Implement a method rotate(a, r) that “rotates” the array a so that a[i] moves
to a[(i + r) mod a.length], for all i ∈ {0, . . . , a.length}.
Exercise 2.6. Implement a method rotate(r) that “rotates” a List so that list item i
becomes list item (i + r) mod n. When run on an ArrayDeque, or a DualArrayDeque,
rotate(r) should run in O(1 + min{r, n − r}) time.
Exercise 2.7. Modify the ArrayDeque implementation so that the shifting done by add(i, x),
remove(i), and resize() is done using System.arraycopy(s, i, d, j, n).
Exercise 2.8. Modify the ArrayDeque implementation so that it does not use the % operator
(which is expensive on some systems). Instead, it should make use of the fact that, if
a.length is a power of 2, then k%a.length=k&(a.length − 1). (Here, & is the bitwise-and
operator.)
Exercise 2.9. Design and implement a variant of ArrayDeque that does not do any mod-
ular arithmetic at all. Instead, all the data sits in a consecutive block, in order, inside an
array. When the data overruns the beginning or the end of this array, a modified rebuild()
operation is performed. The amortized cost of all operations should be the same as in an
ArrayDeque.
Hint: Making this work is really all about how a rebuild() operation is performed. You
would like rebuild() to put the data structure into a state where the data cannot run off
either end until at least n/2 operations have been performed.
Test the performance of your implementation against the ArrayDeque. Optimize
your implementation (by using System.arraycopy(a, i, b, i, n)) and see if you can get it to
outperform the ArrayDeque implementation.
Exercise 2.10. Design and implement a version of a RootishArrayStack that has only
√
O( n) wasted space, but that can perform add(i, x) and remove(i, x) operations in O(1 +
min{i, n − i}) time.
Exercise 2.11. Design and implement a version of a RootishArrayStack that has only
√
O( n) wasted space, but that can perform add(i, x) and remove(i, x) operations in O(1 +
√
min{ n, n − i}) time. (For an idea on how to do this, see Section 3.3.)
54
2. Array-Based Lists 2.7. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 2.12. Design and implement a version of a RootishArrayStack that has only
√
O( n) wasted space, but that can perform add(i, x) and remove(i, x) operations in O(1 +
√
min{i, n, n − i}) time. (See Section 3.3 for ideas on how to achieve this.)
Exercise 2.13. Design and implement a CubishArrayStack. This three level structure im-
plements the List interface using at most O(n2/3 ) wasted space. In this structure, get(i)
and set(i, x) take constant time; while add(i, x) and remove(i) take O(n1/3 ) amortized
time.
55
2. Array-Based Lists 2.7. Discussion and Exercises
56
Chapter 3
Linked Lists
In this chapter, we continue to study implementations of the List interface, this time
using pointer-based data structures rather than arrays. The structures in this chapter are
made up of nodes that contain the list items. The nodes are linked together into a sequence
using references (pointers). We first study singly-linked lists, which can implement Stack
and (FIFO) Queue operations in constant time per operation.
Linked lists have advantages and disadvantages relative to array-based implemen-
tations of the List interface. The primary disadvantage is that we lose the ability to access
any element using get(i) or set(i, x) in constant time. Instead, we have to walk through
the list, one element at a time, until we reach the ith element. The primary advantage is
that they are more dynamic: Given a reference to any list node u, we can delete u or insert
a node adjacent to u in constant time. This is true no matter where u is in the list.
3.1 SLList: A Singly-Linked List
An SLList (singly-linked list) is a sequence of Nodes. Each node u stores a data value
u.x and a reference u.next to the next node in the sequence. For the last node w in the
sequence, w.next = null
SLList
class Node {
T x;
Node next;
}
For efficiency, an SLList uses variables head and tail to keep track of the first
and last node in the sequence, as well as an integer n to keep track of the length of the
sequence:
57
3. Linked Lists 3.1. SLList: A Singly-Linked List
head tail
a b c d e
head tail add(x)
a b c d e x
head tail remove()
b c d e x
head tail pop()
c d e x
head tail push(y)
y c d e x
Figure 3.1: A sequence of Queue (add(x) and remove()) and Stack (push(x) and pop()) op-
erations on an SLList.
SLList
Node head;
Node tail;
int n;
A sequence of Stack and Queue operations on an SLList is illustrated in Figure 3.1.
An SLList can efficiently implement the Stack operations push() and pop() by
adding and removing elements at the head of the sequence. The push() operation sim-
ply creates a new node u with data value x, sets u.next to the old head of the list and
makes u the new head of the list. Finally, it increments n since the size of the SLList has
increased by one:
SLList
T push(T x) {
Node u = new Node();
u.x = x;
u.next = head;
head = u;
if (n == 0)
tail = u;
n++;
return x;
}
The pop() operation, after checking that the SLList is not empty, removes the head
by setting head = head.next and decrementing n. A special case occurs when the last
58
3. Linked Lists 3.1. SLList: A Singly-Linked List
element is being removed, in which case tail is set to null:
SLList
T pop() {
if (n == 0) return null;
T x = head.x;
head = head.next;
if (--n == 0) tail = null;
return x;
}
Clearly, both the push(x) and pop() operations run in O(1) time.
3.1.1 Queue Operations
An SLList can also efficiently implement the FIFO queue operations add(x) and remove().
Removals are done from the head of the list, and are identical to the pop() operation:
SLList
T remove() {
if (n == 0) return null;
T x = head.x;
head = head.next;
if (--n == 0) tail = null;
return x;
}
Additions, on the other hand, are done at the tail of the list. In most cases, this is
done by setting tail.next = u, where u is the newly created node that contains x. However,
a special case occurs when n = 0, in which case tail = head = null. In this case, both tail
and head are set to u.
SLList
boolean add(T x) {
Node u = new Node();
u.x = x;
if (n == 0) {
head = u;
} else {
tail.next = u;
}
tail = u;
n++;
return true;
}
Clearly, both add(x) and remove() take constant time.
59
3. Linked Lists 3.2. DLList: A Doubly-Linked List
3.1.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of an SLList:
Theorem 3.1. An SLList implements the Stack and (FIFO) Queue interfaces. The push(x),
pop(), add(x) and remove() operations run in O(1) time per operation.
An SLList comes very close to implementing the full set of Deque operations. The
only missing operation is removal from the tail of an SLList. Removing from the tail of
an SLList is difficult because it requires updating the value of tail so that it points to
the node w that precedes tail in the SLList; this is the node w such that w.next = tail.
Unfortunately, the only way to get to w is by traversing the SLList starting at head and
taking n − 2 steps.
3.2 DLList: A Doubly-Linked List
A DLList (doubly-linked list) is very similar to an SLList except that each node u in a
DLList has references to both the node u.next that follows it and the node u.prev that
precedes it.
DLList
class Node {
T x;
Node prev, next;
}
When implementing an SLList, we saw that there were always some special cases
to worry about. For example, removing the last element from an SLList or adding an
element to an empty SLList requires special care so that head and tail are correctly
updated. In a DLList, the number of these special cases increases considerably. Perhaps
the cleanest way to take care of all these special cases in a DLList is to introduce a dummy
node. This is a node that does not contain any data, but acts as a placeholder so that there
are no special nodes; every node has both a next and a prev, with dummy acting as the node
that follows the last node in the list and that precedes the first node in the list. In this way,
the nodes of the list are (doubly-)linked into a cycle, as illustrated in Figure 3.2.
DLList
int n;
Node dummy;
DLList() {
dummy = new Node();
dummy.next = dummy;
60
3. Linked Lists 3.2. DLList: A Doubly-Linked List
dummy
a b c d e
Figure 3.2: A DLList containing a,b,c,d,e.
dummy.prev = dummy;
n = 0;
}
Finding the node with a particular index in a DLList is easy; we can either start at
the head of the list (dummy.next) and work forward, or start at the tail of the list (dummy.prev)
and work backward. This allows us to reach the ith node in O(1 + min{i, n − i}) time:
DLList
Node getNode(int i) {
Node p = null;
if (i < n / 2) {
p = dummy.next;
for (int j = 0; j < i; j++)
p = p.next;
} else {
p = dummy;
for (int j = n; j > i; j--)
p = p.prev;
}
return (p);
}
The get(i) and set(i, x) operations are now also easy. We first find the ith node
and then get or set its x value:
DLList
T get(int i) {
return getNode(i).x;
}
T set(int i, T x) {
Node u = getNode(i);
T y = u.x;
u.x = x;
61
3. Linked Lists 3.2. DLList: A Doubly-Linked List
u.prev u
u.next
··· p w ···
Figure 3.3: Adding the node u before the node w in a DLList.
return y;
}
The running time of these operations is dominated by the time it takes to find the
ith node, and is therefore O(1 + min{i, n − i}).
3.2.1 Adding and Removing
If we have a reference to a node w in a DLList and we want to insert a node u before w, then
this is just a matter of setting u.next = w, u.prev = w.prev, and then adjusting u.prev.next
and u.next.prev. (See Figure 3.3.) Thanks to the dummy node, there is no need to worry
about w.prev or w.next not existing.
DLList
Node addBefore(Node w, T x) {
Node u = new Node();
u.x = x;
u.prev = w.prev;
u.next = w;
u.next.prev = u;
u.prev.next = u;
n++;
return u;
}
Now, the list operation add(i, x) is trivial to implement. We find the ith node in
the DLList and insert a new node u that contains x just before it.
DLList
void add(int i, T x) {
addBefore(getNode(i), x);
}
62
3. Linked Lists 3.2. DLList: A Doubly-Linked List
The only non-constant part of the running time of add(i, x) is the time it takes to
find the ith node (using getNode(i)). Thus, add(i, x) runs in O(1 + min{i, n − i}) time.
Removing a node w from a DLList is easy. We need only adjust pointers at w.next
and w.prev so that they skip over w. Again, the use of the dummy node eliminates the need
to consider any special cases:
DLList
void remove(Node w) {
w.prev.next = w.next;
w.next.prev = w.prev;
n--;
}
Now the remove(i) operation is trivial. We find the node with index i and remove
it:
DLList
T remove(int i) {
Node w = getNode(i);
remove(w);
return w.x;
}
Again, the only expensive part of this operation is finding the ith node using
getNode(i), so remove(i) runs in O(1 + min{i, n − i}) time.
3.2.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of a DLList:
Theorem 3.2. A DLList implements the List interface. The get(i), set(i, x), add(i, x) and
remove(i) operations run in O(1 + min{i, n − i}) time per operation.
It is worth noting that, if we ignore the cost of the getNode(i) operation, then all
operations on a DLList take constant time. Thus, the only expensive part of operations on
a DLList is finding the relevant node. Once we have the relevant node, adding, removing,
or accessing the data at that node takes only constant time.
This is in sharp contrast to the array-based List implementations of Chapter 2; in
those implementations, the relevant array item can be found in constant time. However,
addition or removal requires shifting elements in the array and, in general, takes non-
constant time.
63
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
For this reason, linked list structures are well-suited to applications where refer-
ences to list nodes can be obtained through external means. An example of this is the
LinkedHashSet data structure found in the Java Collections Framework, in which a set of
items is stored in a doubly-linked list and the nodes of the doubly-linked list are stored in
a hash table (discussed in Chapter 5). When elements are removed from a LinkedHashSet,
the hash table is used to find the relevant list node in constant time and then the list node
is deleted (also in constant time).
3.3 SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
One of the drawbacks of linked lists (besides the time it takes to access elements that are
deep within the list) is their space usage. Each node in a DLList requires an additional
two references to the next and previous nodes in the list. Two of the fields in a Node are
dedicated to maintaining the list and only one of the fields is for storing data!
An SEList (space-efficient list) reduces this wasted space using a simple idea:
Rather than store individual elements in a DLList, we store a block (array) containing
several items. More precisely, an SEList is parameterized by a block size b. Each individ-
ual node in an SEList stores a block that can hold up to b + 1 elements.
It will turn out, for reasons that become clear later, that it will be helpful if we
can do Deque operations on each block. The data structure we choose for this is a BDeque
(bounded deque), derived from the ArrayDeque structure described in Section 2.4. The
BDeque differs from the ArrayDeque in one small way: When a new BDeque is created, the
size of the backing array a is fixed at b + 1 and it never grows or shrinks. The important
property of a BDeque is that it allows for the addition or removal of elements at either the
front or back in constant time. This will be useful as elements are shifted from one block
to another.
SEList
class BDeque extends ArrayDeque<T> {
BDeque() {
super(SEList.this.type());
a = newArray(b+1);
}
void resize() { }
}
An SEList is then a doubly-linked list of blocks:
SEList
class Node {
BDeque d;
64
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
Node prev, next;
}
SEList
int n;
Node dummy;
3.3.1 Space Requirements
An SEList places very tight restrictions on the number of elements in a block: Unless a
block is the last block, then that block contains at least b − 1 and at most b + 1 elements.
This means that, if an SEList contains n elements, then it has at most
n/(b − 1) + 1 = O(n/b)
blocks. The BDeque for each block contains an array of length b + 1 but, for all blocks
except the last, at most a constant amount of space is wasted in this array. The remaining
memory used by a block is also constant. This means that the wasted space in an SEList
√
is only O(b + n/b). By choosing a value of b within a constant factor of n we can make the
√
space-overhead of an SEList approach the n lower bound given in Section 2.6.2.
3.3.2 Finding Elements
The first challenge we face with an SEList is finding the list item with a given index i.
Note that the location of an element consists of two parts: The node u that contains the
block that contains the element as well as the index j of the element within its block.
SEList
class Location {
Node u;
int j;
Location(Node u, int j) {
this.u = u;
this.j = j;
}
}
To find the block that contains a particular element, we proceed in the same way
as in a DLList. We either start at the front of the list and traverse in the forward direction
or at the back of the list and traverse backwards until we reach the node we want. The
only difference is that, each time we move from one node to the next, we skip over a whole
block of elements.
65
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
SEList
Location getLocation(int i) {
if (i < n/2) {
Node u = dummy.next;
while (i >= u.d.size()) {
i -= u.d.size();
u = u.next;
}
return new Location(u, i);
} else {
Node u = dummy;
int idx = n;
while (i < idx) {
u = u.prev;
idx -= u.d.size();
}
return new Location(u, i-idx);
}
}
Remember that, with the exception of at most one block, each block contains at
least b − 1 elements, so each step in our search gets us b − 1 elements closer to the element
we are looking for. If we are searching forward, this means we reach the node we want after
O(1 + i/b) steps. If we search backwards, we reach the node we want after O(1 + (n − i)/b)
steps. The algorithm takes the smaller of these two quantities depending on the value of
i, so the time to locate the item with index i is O(1 + min{i, n − i}/b).
Once we know how to locate the item with index i, the get(i) and set(i, x) opera-
tions translate into getting or setting a particular index in the correct block:
SEList
T get(int i) {
Location l = getLocation(i);
return l.u.d.get(l.j);
}
T set(int i, T x) {
Location l = getLocation(i);
T y = l.u.d.get(l.j);
l.u.d.set(l.j,x);
return y;
}
The running times of these operations are dominated by the time it takes to locate
the item, so they also run in O(1 + min{i, n − i}/b) time.
66
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
3.3.3 Adding an Element
Things start to get complicated when adding elements to an SEList. Before considering
the general case, we consider the easier operation, add(x), in which x is added to the end
of the list. If the last block is full (or does not exist because there are no blocks yet), then
we first allocate a new block and append it to the list of blocks. Now that we are sure that
the last block exists and is not full, we append x to the last block.
SEList
boolean add(T x) {
Node last = dummy.prev;
if (last == dummy || last.d.size() == b+1) {
last = addBefore(dummy);
}
last.d.add(x);
n++;
return true;
}
Things get more complicated when we add to the interior of the list using add(i, x).
We first locate i to get the node u whose block contains the ith list item. The problem is
that we want to insert x into u’s block, but we have to be prepared for the case where u’s
block already contains b + 1 elements, so that it is full and there is no room for x.
Let u0 , u1 , u2 , . . . denote u, u.next, u.next.next, and so on. We explore u0 , u1 , u2 , . . .
looking for a node that can provide space for x. Three cases can occur during our space
exploration (see Figure 3.4):
1. We quickly (in r + 1 ≤ b steps) find a node ur whose block is not full. In this case, we
perform r shifts of an element from one block into the next, so that the free space in
ur becomes a free space in u0 . We can then insert x into u0 ’s block.
2. We quickly (in r +1 ≤ b steps) run off the end of the list of blocks. In this case, we add
a new empty block to the end of the list of blocks and proceed as in the first case.
3. After b steps we do not find any block that is not full. In this case, u0 , . . . , ub−1 is a
sequence of b blocks that each contain b + 1 elements. We insert a new block ub at
the end of this sequence and spread the original b(b + 1) elements so that each block
of u0 , . . . , ub contains exactly b elements. Now u0 ’s block contains only b elements so
it has room for us to insert x.
67
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
··· a b c d e f g h i j ···
··· a x b c d e f g h i j ···
··· a b c d e f g h
··· a x b c d e f g h
··· a b c d e f g h i j k l ···
··· a x b c d e f g h i j k l ···
Figure 3.4: The three cases that occur during the addition of an item x in the interior of an
SEList. (This SEList has block size b = 3.)
SEList
void add(int i, T x) {
if (i == n) {
add(x);
return;
}
Location l = getLocation(i);
Node u = l.u;
int r = 0;
while (r < b && u != dummy && u.d.size() == b+1) {
u = u.next;
r++;
}
if (r == b) { // found b blocks each with b+1 elements
spread(l.u);
u = l.u;
}
if (u == dummy) { // ran off the end of the list - add new node
u = addBefore(u);
}
while (u != l.u) { // work backwards, shifting an element at each step
u.d.add(0, u.prev.d.remove(u.prev.d.size()-1));
u = u.prev;
}
68
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
u.d.add(l.j, x);
n++;
}
The running time of the add(i, x) operation depends on which of the three cases
above occurs. Cases 1 and 2 involve examining and shifting elements through at most b
blocks and take O(b) time. Case 3 involves calling the spread(u) method, which moves
b(b + 1) elements and takes O(b2 ) time. If we ignore the cost of Case 3 (which we will
account for later with amortization) this means that the total running time to locate i and
perform the insertion of x is O(b + min{i, n − i}/b).
3.3.4 Removing an Element
Removing an element, using the remove(i) method from an SEList is similar to adding an
element. We first locate the node u that contains the element with index i. Now, we have
to be prepared for the case where we cannot remove an element from u without causing
u’s block to have size less than b − 1, which is not allowed.
Again, let u0 , u1 , u2 , . . . denote u, u.next, u.next.next, We examine u0 , u1 , u2 , . . . in
order looking for a node from which we can borrow an element to make the size of u0 ’s
block larger than b − 1. There are three cases to consider (see Figure 3.5):
1. We quickly (in r + 1 ≤ b steps) find a node whose block contains more than b − 1
elements. In this case, we perform r shifts of an element from one block into the
previous, so that the extra element in ur becomes an extra element in u0 . We can
then remove the appropriate element from u0 ’s block.
2. We quickly (in r + 1 ≤ b steps) run off the end of the list of blocks. In this case, ur
is the last block, and there is no requirement that ur ’s block contain at least b − 1
elements. Therefore, we proceed as above, borrowing an element from ur to make an
extra element in u0 . If this causes ur ’s block to become empty, then we remove it.
3. After b steps we do not find any block containing more than b − 1 elements. In
this case, u0 , . . . , ub−1 is a sequence of b blocks that each contain b − 1 elements. We
gather these b(b−1) elements into u0 , . . . , ub−2 so that each of these b−1 blocks contains
exactly b elements and we remove ub−1 , which is now empty. Now u0 ’s block contains
b elements so we can remove the appropriate element from it.
SEList
T remove(int i) {
Location l = getLocation(i);
69
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
··· a b c d e f g ···
··· a c d e f g ···
··· a b c d e f
··· a c d e f
··· a b c d e f ···
··· a c d e f ···
Figure 3.5: The three cases that occur during the removal of an item x in the interior of an
SEList. (This SEList has block size b = 3.)
T y = l.u.d.get(l.j);
Node u = l.u;
int r = 0;
while (r < b && u != dummy && u.d.size() == b-1) {
u = u.next;
r++;
}
if (r == b) { // found b blocks each with b-1 elements
gather(l.u);
}
u = l.u;
u.d.remove(l.j);
while (u.d.size() < b-1 && u.next != dummy) {
u.d.add(u.next.d.remove(0));
u = u.next;
}
if (u.d.isEmpty()) remove(u);
n--;
return y;
}
Like the add(i, x) operation, the running time of the remove(i) operation is O(b +
min{i, n − i}/b) if we ignore the cost of the gather(u) method that occurs in Case 3.
70
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
3.3.5 Amortized Analysis of Spreading and Gathering
Next, we consider the cost of the gather(u) and spread(u) methods that may be executed
by the add(i, x) and remove(i) methods. For completeness, here they are:
SEList
void spread(Node u) {
Node w = u;
for (int j = 0; j < b; j++) {
w = w.next;
}
w = addBefore(w);
while (w != u) {
while (w.d.size() < b)
w.d.add(0,w.prev.d.remove(w.prev.d.size()-1));
w = w.prev;
}
}
SEList
void gather(Node u) {
Node w = u;
for (int j = 0; j < b-1; j++) {
while (w.d.size() < b)
w.d.add(w.next.d.remove(0));
w = w.next;
}
remove(w);
}
The running time of each of these methods is dominated by the two nested loops.
Both the inner loop and outer loop execute at most b + 1 times, so the total running time
of each of these methods is O((b + 1)2 ) = O(b2 ). However, the following lemma shows that
these methods execute on at most one out of every b calls to add(i, x) or remove(i).
Lemma 3.1. If an empty SEList is created and any sequence of m ≥ 1 calls to add(i, x) and
remove(i) are performed, then the total time spent during all calls to spread() and gather() is
O(bm).
Proof. We will use the potential method of amortized analysis. We say that a node u is
fragile if u’s block does not contain b elements (so that u is either the last node, or contains
b − 1 or b + 1 elements). Any node whose block contains b elements is rugged. Define the
potential of an SEList as the number of fragile nodes it contains. We will consider only
71
3. Linked Lists 3.3. SEList: A Space-Efficient Linked List
the add(i, x) operation and its relation to the number of calls to spread(u). The analysis of
remove(i) and gather(u) is identical.
Notice that, if Case 1 occurs during the add(i, x) method, then only one node, ur
has the size of its block changed. Therefore, at most one node, namely ur , goes from being
rugged to being fragile. If Case 2 occurs, then a new node is created, and this node is
fragile, but no other node changes sizes, so the number of fragile nodes increases by one.
Thus, in either Case 1 or Case 2 the potential of the SEList increases by at most 1.
Finally, if Case 3 occurs, it is because u0 , . . . , ub−1 are all fragile nodes. Then spread(u0 )
is called and these b fragile nodes are replaced with b + 1 rugged nodes. Finally, x is added
to u0 ’s block, making u0 fragile. In total the potential decreases by b − 1.
In summary, the potential starts at 0 (there are no nodes in the list). Each time
Case 1 or Case 2 occurs, the potential increases by at most 1. Each time Case 3 occurs, the
potential decreases by b − 1. The potential (which counts the number of fragile nodes) is
never less than 0. We conclude that, for every occurrence of Case 3, there are at least b − 1
occurrences of Case 1 or Case 2. Thus, for every call to spread(u) there are at least b calls
to add(i, x). This completes the proof.
3.3.6 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the SEList data structure:
Theorem 3.3. An SEList implements the List interface. Ignoring the cost of calls to spread(u)
and gather(u), an SEList with block size b supports the operations
• get(i) and set(i, x) in O(1 + min{i, n − i}/b) time per operation; and
• add(i, x) and remove(i) in O(b + min{i, n − i}/b) time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty SEList, any sequence of m add(i, x) and remove(i)
operations results in a total of O(bm) time spent during all calls to spread(u) and gather(u).
The space (measured in words)1 used by an SEList that stores n elements is n + O(b +
n/b).
The SEList is a tradeoff between an ArrayList and a DLList where the relative
mix of these two structures depends on the block size b. At the extreme b = 2, each SEList
node stores at most 3 values, which is really not much different than a DLList. At the other
1 Recall Section 1.3 for a discussion of how memory is measured.
72
3. Linked Lists 3.4. Discussion and Exercises
extreme, b > n, all the elements are stored in a single array, just like in an ArrayList. In
between these two extremes lies a tradeoff between the time it takes to add or remove a
list item and the time it takes to locate a particular list item.
3.4 Discussion and Exercises
Both singly-linked and doubly-linked lists are folklore, having been used in programs for
over 40 years. They are discussed, for example, by Knuth [46, Sections 2.2.3–2.2.5]. Even
the SEList data structure seems to be a well-known data structures exercise.
Exercise 3.1. Why is it not possible, in an SLList to use a dummy node to avoid all the
special cases that occur in the operations push(x), pop(), add(x), and remove()?
Exercise 3.2. Design and implement an SLList method, secondLast(), that returns the
second-last element of an SLList. Do this without using the member variable, n, that
keeps track of the size of the list.
Exercise 3.3. Describe and implement the List operations get(i), set(i, x), add(i, x) and
remove(i) on an SLList. Each of these operations should run in O(1 + i) time.
Exercise 3.4. Design and implement an SLList method, reverse() that reverses the order
of elements in an SLList. This method should run in O(n) time, should not use recursion,
should not use any secondary data structures, and should not create any new nodes.
Exercise 3.5. Design and implement SLList and DLList methods called checkSize().
These methods walk through the list and count the number of nodes to see if this matches
the value, n, stored in the list. These methods return nothing, but throw an exception if
the size they compute does not match the value of n.
Exercise 3.6. Without referring to this chapter, try to recreate the code for the addBefore(w)
operation, that creates a node, u, and adds it just before the node w in a DLList. If your
code does not exactly match the code given in this book it may still be correct. Test it and
see if it works.
The next few exercises involve performing manipulations on DLLists. These should
all be done without allocating any new nodes or temporary arrays. More specifically, they
can all be done only by changing the prev and next values of existing nodes.
Exercise 3.7. Write a DLList method isPalindrome() that returns true if the list is a
palindrome, i.e., the element at position i is equal to the element at position n − i − 1 for
all i ∈ {0, . . . , n − 1}. Your code should run in O(n) time.
73
3. Linked Lists 3.4. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 3.8. Implement a method rotate(r) that “rotates” a DLList so that list item i
becomes list item (i + r) mod n. This method should run in O(1 + min{r, n − r}) time and
should not modify any nodes in the list.
Exercise 3.9. Write a method, truncate(i), that truncates a DLList at position i. After
the execution of this method, the size of the list is i and it contains only the elements at
indices 0, . . . , i−1. The return value is another DLList that contains the elements at indices
i, . . . , n − 1. This method should run in O(min{i, n − i}) time.
Exercise 3.10. Write a DLList method, absorb(l2), that takes as an argument a DLList, l2,
empties it and appends its contents, in order, to the receiver. For example, if l1 contains
a, b, c and l2 contains d, e, f , then after calling l1.absorb(l2), l1 will contain a, b, c, d, e, f
and l2 will be empty.
Exercise 3.11. Write a method deal() that removes all the elements with odd-numbered
indices from a DLList and return a DLList containing these elements. For example, if l1,
contains the elements a, b, c, d, e, f , then after calling l1.deal(), l1 should contain a, c, e and
a list containing b, d, f should be returned.
Exercise 3.12. Write a method, reverse(), that reverses the order of elements in a DLList.
Exercise 3.13. This exercises walks you through an implementation of the merge sort al-
gorithm for sorting a DLList, as discussed in Section 11.1.1. In your implementation, per-
form comparisons between elements using the compareTo(x) method so that the resulting
implementation can sort any DLList containing elements that implement the Comparable
interface.
1. Write a DLList method called takeFirst(l2). This method takes the first node from
l2 and appends it to the the receiving list. This is equivalent to add(size(), l2.remove(0)),
except that it should not create a new node.
2. Write a DLList static method, merge(l1, l2), that takes two sorted lists l1 and l2,
merges them, and returns a new sorted list containing the result. This causes l1 and
l2 to be emptied in the proces. For example, if l1 contains a, c, d and l2 contains
b, e, f , then this method returns a new list containing a, b, c, d, e, f .
3. Write a DLList method sort() that sorts the elements contained in the list using the
merge sort algorithm. This recursive algorithm works as following:
(a) If the list contains 0 or 1 elements then there is nothing to do. Otherwise,
74
3. Linked Lists 3.4. Discussion and Exercises
(b) Split the list into two approximately equal length lists l1 and l2 using the
truncate(size()/2) method;
(c) Recursively sort l1;
(d) Recursively sort l2; and, finally,
(e) Merge l1 and l2 into a single sorted list.
The next few exercises are more advanced and require a clear understanding of
what happens to the minimum value stored in a Stack or Queue as items are added and
removed.
Exercise 3.14. Design and implement a MinStack data structure that can store comparable
elements and supports the stack operations push(x), pop(), and size(), as well as the min()
operation, which returns the minimum value currently stored in the data structure. All
operations should run in constant time.
Exercise 3.15. Design an implement a MinQueue data structure that can store comparable
elements and supports the queue operations add(x), remove(), and size(), as well as the
min() operation, which returns the minimum value currently stored in the data structure.
All operations should run in constant amortized time.
Exercise 3.16. Design an implement a MinDeque data structure that can store compara-
ble elements and supports the queue operations addFirst(x), addLast(x) removeFirst(),
removeLast() and size(), as well as the min() operation, which returns the minimum value
currently stored in the data structure. All operations should run in constant amortized
time.
The next exercises are designed to test the reader’s understanding of the imple-
mentation an analysis of the space-efficient SEList:
Exercise 3.17. Prove that, if an SEList is used like a Stack (so that the modifications are
done using push(x) ≡ add(size(), x) and pop() ≡ remove(size() − 1)) then these operations
run in constant amortized time, independent of the value of b.
Exercise 3.18. Design an implement of a version of an SEList that supports all the Deque
operations in constant amortized time per operation, independent of the value of b.
75
3. Linked Lists 3.4. Discussion and Exercises
76
Chapter 4
Skiplists
In this chapter, we discuss a beautiful data structure: the skiplist, that has a variety of
applications. Using a skiplist we can implement a List that is fast for all the operations
get(i), set(i, x), add(i, x), and remove(i). We can also implement an SSet in which all
operations run in O(log n) expected time.
Skiplists rely on randomization for their efficiency. In particular, a skiplist uses
random coin tosses when an element is inserted to determine the height of that element.
The performance of skiplists is expressed in terms of expected running times and lengths
of paths. This expectation is taken over the random coin tosses used by the skiplist. In the
implementation, the random coin tosses used by a skiplist are simulated using a pseudo-
random number (or bit) generator.
4.1 The Basic Structure
Conceptually, a skiplist is a sequence of singly-linked lists L0 , . . . , Lh , where each Lr con-
tains a subset of the items in Lr−1 . We start with the input list L0 that contains n items
and construct L1 from L0 , L2 from L1 , and so on. The items in Lr are obtained by tossing
a coin for each element, x, in Lr−1 and including x in Lr if the coin comes up heads. This
process ends when we create a list Lr that is empty. An example of a skiplist is shown in
Figure 4.1.
For an element, x, in a skiplist, we call the height of x the largest value r such that
x appears in Lr . Thus, for example, elements that only appear in L0 have height 0. If we
spend a few moments thinking about it, we notice that the height of x corresponds to the
following experiment: Toss a coin repeatedly until the first time it comes up tails. How
many times did it come up heads? The answer, not surprisingly, is that the expected height
of a node is 1. (We expect to toss the coin twice before getting tails, but we don’t count the
last toss.) The height of a skiplist is the height of its tallest node.
77
4. Skiplists 4.1. The Basic Structure
L5
L4
L3
L2
L1
L0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
sentinel
Figure 4.1: A skiplist containing seven elements.
L5
L4
L3
L2
L1
L0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
sentinel
Figure 4.2: The search path for the node containing 4 in a skiplist.
At the head of every list is a special node, called the sentinel, that acts as a dummy
node for the list. The key property of skiplists is that there is a short path, called the search
path, from the sentinel in Lh to every node in L0 . Remembering how to construct a search
path for a node, u, is easy (see Figure 4.2) : Start at the top left corner of your skiplist
(the sentinel in Lh ) and always go right unless that would overshoot u, in which case you
should take a step down into the list below.
More precisely, to construct the search path for the node u in L0 we start at the
sentinel, w, in Lh . Next, we examine w.next. If w.next contains an item that appears before
u in L0 , then we set w = w.next. Otherwise, we move down and continue the search at the
occurrence of w in the list Lh−1 . We continue this way until we reach the predecessor of u
in L0 .
The following result, which we will prove in Section 4.4, shows that the search path
is quite short:
Lemma 4.1. The expected length of the search path for any node, u, in L0 is at most 2 log n +
O(1) = O(log n).
78
4. Skiplists 4.2. SkiplistSSet: An Efficient SSet Implementation
A space-efficient way to implement a Skiplist is to define a Node, u, as consisting
of a data value, x, and an array, next, of pointers, where u.next[i] points to u’s successor
in the list Li . In this way, the data, x, in a node is referenced only once, even though x may
appear in several lists.
SkiplistSSet
class Node<T> {
T x;
Node<T>[] next;
Node(T ix, int h) {
x = ix;
next = (Node<T>[])Array.newInstance(Node.class, h+1);
}
int height() {
return next.length - 1;
}
}
The next two sections of this chapter discuss two different applications of skiplists.
In each of these applications, L0 stores the main structure (a list of elements or a sorted
set of elements). The primary difference between these structures is in how a search path
is navigated; in particular, they differ in how they decide if a search path should go down
into Lr−1 or go right within Lr .
4.2 SkiplistSSet: An Efficient SSet Implementation
A SkiplistSSet uses a skiplist structure to implement the SSet interface. When used this
way, the list L0 stores the elements of the SSet in sorted order. The find(x) method works
by following the search path for the smallest value y such that y ≥ x:
SkiplistSSet
Node<T> findPredNode(T x) {
Node<T> u = sentinel;
int r = h;
while (r >= 0) {
while (u.next[r] != null && compare(u.next[r].x,x) < 0)
u = u.next[r]; // go right in list r
r--; // go down into list r-1
}
return u;
}
T find(T x) {
Node<T> u = findPredNode(x);
79
4. Skiplists 4.2. SkiplistSSet: An Efficient SSet Implementation
return u.next[0] == null ? null : u.next[0].x;
}
Following the search path for y is easy: when situated at some node, u, in Lr , we
look right to u.next[r].x. If x > u.next[r].x, then we take a step to the right in Lr , otherwise
we move down into Lr−1 . Each step (right or down) in this search takes only constant time
so, by Lemma 4.1, the expected running time of find(x) is O(log n).
Before we can add an element to a SkipListSSet, we need a method to simulate
tossing coins to determine the height, k, of a new node. We do this by picking a random
integer, z, and counting the number of trailing 1s in the binary representation of z:1
SkiplistSSet
int pickHeight() {
int z = rand.nextInt();
int k = 0;
int m = 1;
while ((z & m) != 0) {
k++;
m <<= 1;
}
return k;
}
To implement the add(x) method in a SkiplistSSet we search for x and then splice
x into a few lists L0 ,. . . ,Lk , where k is selected using the pickHeight() method. The easiest
way to do this is to use an array, stack, that keeps track of the nodes at which the search
path goes down from some list Lr into Lr−1 . More precisely, stack[r] is the node in Lr
where the search path proceeded down into Lr−1 . The nodes that we modify to insert x are
precisely the nodes stack[0], . . . , stack[k]. The following code implements this algorithm
for add(x):
SkiplistSSet
boolean add(T x) {
Node<T> u = sentinel;
int r = h;
int comp = 0;
while (r >= 0) {
while (u.next[r] != null && (comp = compare(u.next[r].x,x)) < 0)
1 This method does not exactly replicate the coin-tossing experiment since the value of k will always be less
than the number of bits in an int. However, this will have negligible impact unless the number of elements
in the structure is much greater than 232 = 4294967296.
80
4. Skiplists 4.2. SkiplistSSet: An Efficient SSet Implementation
0 1 2 3 3.5 4 5 6
sentinel add(3.5)
Figure 4.3: Adding the node containing 3.5 to a skiplist. The nodes stored in stack are
highlighted.
u = u.next[r];
if (u.next[r] != null && comp == 0) return false;
stack[r--] = u; // going down, store u
}
Node<T> w = new Node<T>(x, pickHeight());
while (h < w.height())
stack[++h] = sentinel; // increasing height of skiplist
for (int i = 0; i < w.next.length; i++) {
w.next[i] = stack[i].next[i];
stack[i].next[i] = w;
}
n++;
return true;
}
Removing an element, x, is done in a similar way, except that there is no need for
stack to keep track of the search path. The removal can be done as we are following the
search path. We search for x and each time the search moves downward from a node u, we
check if u.next.x = x and if so, we splice u out of the list:
SkiplistSSet
boolean remove(T x) {
boolean removed = false;
Node<T> u = sentinel;
int r = h;
int comp = 0;
while (r >= 0) {
while (u.next[r] != null && (comp = compare(u.next[r].x, x)) < 0) {
u = u.next[r];
}
if (u.next[r] != null && comp == 0) {
81
4. Skiplists 4.3. SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation
0 1 2 3 4 5 6
sentinel remove(3)
Figure 4.4: Removing the node containing 3 from a skiplist.
removed = true;
u.next[r] = u.next[r].next[r];
if (u == sentinel && u.next[r] == null)
h--; // skiplist height has gone down
}
r--;
}
if (removed) n--;
return removed;
}
4.2.1 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of skiplists when used to implement
sorted sets:
Theorem 4.1. A SkiplistSSet implements the SSet interface. A SkiplistSSet supports the
operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(log n) expected time per operation.
4.3 SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation
A SkiplistList implements the List interface on top of a skiplist structure. In a Skip-
listList, L0 contains the elements of the list in the order they appear in the list. Just like
with a SkiplistSSet, elements can be added, removed, and accessed in O(log n) time.
For this to be possible, we need a way to follow the search path for the ith element
in L0 . The easiest way to do this is to define the notion of the length of an edge in some list,
Lr . We define the length of every edge in L0 as 1. The length of an edge, e, in Lr , r > 0,
is defined as the sum of the lengths of the edges below e in Lr−1 . Equivalently, the length
of e is the number of edges in L0 below e. See Figure 4.5 for an example of a skiplist with
82
4. Skiplists 4.3. SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation
5
L5
5
L4
3 2
L3
3 1 1
L2
3 1 1 1 1
L1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
L0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
sentinel
Figure 4.5: The lengths of the edges in a skiplist.
the lengths of its edges shown. Since the edges of skiplists are stored in arrays, the lengths
can be stored the same way:
SkiplistList
class Node {
T x;
Node[] next;
int[] length;
Node(T ix, int h) {
x = ix;
next = (Node[])Array.newInstance(Node.class, h+1);
length = new int[h+1];
}
int height() {
return next.length - 1;
}
}
The useful property of this definition of length is that, if we are currently at a node
that is at position j in L0 and we follow an edge of length `, then we move to a node whose
position, in L0 , is j + `. In this way, while following a search path, we can keep track of the
position, j, of the current node in L0 . When at a node, u, in Lr , we go right if j plus the
length of the edge u.next[r] is less than i, otherwise we go down into Lr−1 .
SkiplistList
Node findPred(int i) {
Node u = sentinel;
int r = h;
int j = -1; // the index of the current node in list 0
while (r >= 0) {
while (u.next[r] != null && j + u.length[r] < i) {
j += u.length[r];
83
4. Skiplists 4.3. SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation
56
56
3 232 1
3 1 121 1
3 1 121 1 1 1
1 1 1 1 121 1 1 1
0 1 2 3 x 4 5 6
sentinel add(4,x)
Figure 4.6: Adding an element to a SkiplistList.
u = u.next[r];
}
r--;
}
return u;
}
SkiplistList
T get(int i) {
return findPred(i).next[0].x;
}
T set(int i, T x) {
Node u = findPred(i).next[0];
T y = u.x;
u.x = x;
return y;
}
Since the hardest part of the operations get(i) and set(i, x) is finding the ith node
in L0 , these operations run in O(log n) time.
Adding an element to a SkiplistList at a position, i, is fairly straightforward.
Unlike in a SkiplistSSet, we are sure that a new node will actually be added, so we can
do the addition at the same time as we search for the new node’s location. We first pick the
height, k, of the newly inserted node, w, and then follow the search path for i. Anytime
the search path moves down from Lr with r ≤ k, we splice w into Lr . The only extra care
needed is to ensure that the lengths of edges are updated properly. See Figure 4.6.
Note that, each time the search path goes down at a node, u, in Lr , the length of
the edge u.next[r] increases by one, since we are adding an element below that edge at
position i. Splicing the node w between two nodes, u and z, works as shown in Figure 4.7.
84
4. Skiplists 4.3. SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation
u z
`
j
`+1
u w z
i−j ` + 1 − (i − j)
j i
Figure 4.7: Updating the lengths of edges while splicing a node w into a skiplist.
While following the search path we are already keeping track of the position, j, of u in L0 .
Therefore, we know that the length of the edge from u to w is i − j. We can also deduce the
length of the edge from w to z from the length, `, of the edge from u to z. Therefore, we
can splice in w and update the lengths of the edges in constant time.
This sounds more complicated than it actually is and the code is actually quite
simple:
SkiplistList
void add(int i, T x) {
Node w = new Node(x, pickHeight());
if (w.height() > h)
h = w.height();
add(i, w);
}
SkiplistList
Node add(int i, Node w) {
Node u = sentinel;
int k = w.height();
int r = h;
int j = -1; // index of u
while (r >= 0) {
while (u.next[r] != null && j+u.length[r] < i) {
j += u.length[r];
u = u.next[r];
}
u.length[r]++; // to account for new node in list 0
if (r <= k) {
w.next[r] = u.next[r];
u.next[r] = w;
w.length[r] = u.length[r] - (i - j);
u.length[r] = i - j;
}
85
4. Skiplists 4.3. SkiplistList: An Efficient Random-Access List Implementation
54
L5
54
L4
3 21
L3 1
3 1 1
L2 1
3 1 1 1 1
L1 1
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
L0 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
sentinel remove(3)
Figure 4.8: Removing an element from a SkiplistList.
r--;
}
n++;
return u;
}
By now, the implementation of the remove(i) operation in a SkiplistList should
be obvious. We follow the search path for the node at position i. Each time the search path
takes a step down from a node, u, at level r we decrement the length of the edge leaving u
at that level. We also check if u.next[r] is the element of rank i and, if so, splice it out of
the list at that level. An example is shown in Figure 4.8.
SkiplistList
T remove(int i) {
T x = null;
Node u = sentinel;
int r = h;
int j = -1; // index of node u
while (r >= 0) {
while (u.next[r] != null && j+u.length[r] < i) {
j += u.length[r];
u = u.next[r];
}
u.length[r]--; // for the node we are removing
if (j + u.length[r] + 1 == i && u.next[r] != null) {
x = u.next[r].x;
u.length[r] += u.next[r].length[r];
u.next[r] = u.next[r].next[r];
if (u == sentinel && u.next[r] == null)
h--;
}
86
4. Skiplists 4.4. Analysis of Skiplists
r--;
}
n--;
return x;
}
4.3.1 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the SkiplistList data structure:
Theorem 4.2. A SkiplistList implements the List interface. A SkiplistList supports the
operations get(i), set(i, x), add(i, x), and remove(i) in O(log n) expected time per operation.
4.4 Analysis of Skiplists
In this section, we analyze the expected height, size, and length of the search path in a
skiplist. This section requires a background in basic probability. Several proofs are based
on the following basic observation about coin tosses.
Lemma 4.2. Let T be the number of times a fair coin is tossed up to and including the first time
the coin comes up heads. Then E[T ] = 2.
Proof. Suppose we stop tossing the coin the first time it comes up heads. Define the indi-
cator variable
0 if the coin is tossed less than i times
Ii =
1 if the coin is tossed i or more times
Note that Ii = 1 if and only if the first i − 1 coin tosses are tails, so E[Ii ] = Pr{Ii = 1} = 1/2i−1 .
P
Observe that T , the total number of coin tosses, can be written as T = ∞ i=1 Ii . Therefore,
∞
X
E[T ] = E Ii
i=1
∞
X
= E [Ii ]
i=1
X∞
= 1/2i−1
i=1
= 1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + · · ·
=2 .
The next two lemmata tell us that skiplists have linear size:
87
4. Skiplists 4.4. Analysis of Skiplists
Lemma 4.3. The expected number of nodes in a skiplist containing n elements, not including
occurrences of the sentinel, is 2n.
Proof. The probability that any particular element, x, is included in list Lr is 1/2r , so the
expected number of nodes in Lr is n/2r .2 Therefore, the total expected number of nodes in
all lists is
∞
X
n/2r = n(1 + 1/2 + 1/4 + 1/8 + · · · ) = 2n .
r=0
Lemma 4.4. The expected height of a skiplist containing n elements is at most log n + 2.
Proof. For each r ∈ {1, 2, 3, . . . , ∞}, define the indicator random variable
0 if Lr is empty
Ir =
1 if Lr is non-empty
The height, h, of the skiplist is then given by
∞
X
h= Ir .
i=1
Note that Ir is never more than the length, |Lr |, of Lr , so
E[Ir ] ≤ E[|Lr |] = n/2r .
Therefore, we have
∞
X
E[h] = E Ir
r=1
∞
X
= E[Ir ]
r=1
Xnc
blog ∞
X
= E[Ir ] + E[Ir ]
r=1 r=blog nc+1
Xnc
blog ∞
X
≤ 1+ n/2r
r=1 r=blog nc+1
∞
X
≤ log n + 1/2r
r=0
= log n + 2 .
2 See Section 1.2.4 to see how this is derived using indicator variables and linearity of expectation.
88
4. Skiplists 4.4. Analysis of Skiplists
Lemma 4.5. The expected number of nodes in a skiplist containing n elements, including all
occurrences of the sentinel, is 2n + O(log n).
Proof. By Lemma 4.3, the expected number of nodes, not including the sentinel, is 2n.
The number of occurrences of the sentinel is equal to the height, h, of the skiplist so,
by Lemma 4.4 the expected number of occurrences of the sentinel is at most log n + 2 =
O(log n).
Lemma 4.6. The expected length of a search path in a skiplist is at most 2 log n + O(1).
Proof. The easiest way to see this is to consider the reverse search path for a node, x. This
path starts at the predecessor of x in L0 . At any point in time, if the path can go up a
level, then it does. If it cannot go up a level then it goes left. Thinking about this for a few
moments will convince us that the reverse search path for x is identical to the search path
for x, except that it is reversed.
The number of nodes that the reverse search path visits at a particular level, r, is
related to the following experiment: Toss a coin. If the coin comes up heads then go up
and stop, otherwise go left and repeat the experiment. The number of coin tosses before
the heads then represents the number of steps to the left that a reverse search path takes
at a particular level.3 Lemma 4.2 tells us that the expected number of coin tosses before
the first heads is 1.
Let Sr denote the number of steps the forward search path takes at level r that go
to the right. We have just argued that E[Sr ] ≤ 1. Furthermore, Sr ≤ |Lr |, since we can’t take
more steps in Lr than the length of Lr , so
E[Sr ] ≤ E[|Lr |] = n/2r .
We can now finish as in the proof of Lemma 4.4. Let S be the length of the search path for
3 Note that this might overcount the number of steps to the left, since the experiment should end either at
the first heads or when the search path reaches the sentinel, whichever comes first. This is not a problem since
the lemma is only stating an upper bound.
89
4. Skiplists 4.5. Discussion and Exercises
some node, u, in a skiplist, and let h be the height of the skiplist. Then
∞
X
E[S] = E h + Sr
r=0
X∞
= E[h] + E[Sr ]
r=0
Xnc
blog ∞
X
= E[h] + E[Sr ] + E[Sr ]
r=0 r=blog nc+1
Xnc
blog ∞
X
≤ E[h] + 1+ n/2r
r=0 r=blog nc+1
Xnc
blog ∞
X
≤ E[h] + 1+ 1/2r
r=0 r=0
Xnc
blog ∞
X
≤ E[h] + 1+ 1/2r
r=0 r=0
≤ E[h] + log n + 3
≤ 2 log n + 5 .
The following theorem summarizes the results in this section:
Theorem 4.3. A skiplist containing n elements has expected size O(n) and the expected length
of the search path for any particular element is at most 2 log n + O(1).
4.5 Discussion and Exercises
Skiplists were introduced by Pugh [61] who also presented a number of applications of
skiplists [60]. Since then they have been studied extensively. Several researchers have
done very precise analysis of the expected length and variance in length of the search path
for the ith element in a skiplist [45, 44, 58]. Deterministic versions [53], biased versions
[8, 26], and self-adjusting versions [12] of skiplists have all been developed. Skiplist im-
plementations have been written for various languages and frameworks and have seen use
in open-source database systems [69, 63]. A variant of skiplists is used in the HP-UX op-
erating system kernel’s process management structures [42]. Skiplists are even part of the
Java 1.6 API [55].
Exercise 4.1. Illustrate the search paths for 2.5 and 5.5 on the skiplist in Figure 4.1.
90
4. Skiplists 4.5. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 4.2. Illustrate the addition of the values 0.5 (with height 1) and then 3.5 (with
height 2) to the skiplist in Figure 4.1.
Exercise 4.3. Illustrate the removal of the values 1 and then 3 from the skiplist in Fig-
ure 4.1.
Exercise 4.4. Illustrate the execution of remove(2) on the SkiplistList in Figure 4.5.
Exercise 4.5. Illustrate the execution of add(3, x) on the SkiplistList in Figure 4.5. As-
sume that pickHeight() selects a height of 4 for the newly created node.
Exercise 4.6. Show that, during an add(x) or a remove(x) operation, the expected number
of pointers in a SkiplistSet that get changed is constant.
Exercise 4.7. Suppose that, instead of promoting an element from Li−1 into Li based on a
coin toss, we promote it with some probability p, 0 < p < 1.
1. Show that the expected length of a search path is at most (1/p) log1/p n + O(1).
2. What is the value of p that minimizes the preceding expression?
3. What is the expected height of the skiplist?
4. What is the expected number of nodes in the skiplist?
Exercise 4.8. The find(x) method in a SkiplistSet sometimes performs redundant com-
parisons; these occur when x is compared to the same value more than once. They can occur
when, for some node, u, u.next[r] = u.next[r − 1]. Show how these redundant comparisons
happen and modify find(x) so that they are avoided. Analyze the expected number of
comparisons done by your modified find(x) method.
Exercise 4.9. Design and implement a version of a skiplist that implements the SSet inter-
face, but also allows fast access to elements by rank. That is, it also supports the function
get(i), which returns the element whose rank is i in O(log n) expected time. (The rank of
an element x in an SSet is the number of elements in the SSet that are less than x.)
Exercise 4.10. A finger in a skiplist is an array that stores the sequence of nodes on a
search path at which the search path goes down. (The variable stack in the add(x) code on
page 80 is a finger; the shaded nodes in Figure 4.3 show the contents of the finger.) One
can think of a finger as pointing out the path to a node in the lowest list, L0 .
91
4. Skiplists 4.5. Discussion and Exercises
A finger search implements the find(x) operation using a finger, by walking up
the list using the finger until reaching a node u such that u.x < x and u.next = null or
u.next.x > x and then performing a normal search for x starting from u. It is possible to
prove that the expected number of steps required for a finger search is O(1 + log r), where
r is the number values in L0 between x and the value pointed to by the finger.
Implement a subclass of Skiplist called SkiplistWithFinger that does all find(x)
operations using an internal finger. This class stores a finger and does every search as a
finger search. During the search it also updates the finger so that each find(x) operation
uses, as a starting point, a finger that points to the result of the previous find(x) operation.
Exercise 4.11. Write a method, truncate(i), that truncates a SkiplistList at position i.
After the execution of this method, the size of the list is i and it contains only the elements
at indices 0, . . . , i − 1. The return value is another SkiplistList that contains the elements
at indices i, . . . , n − 1. This method should run in O(log n) time.
Exercise 4.12. Write a SkiplistList method, absorb(l2), that takes as an argument a
SkiplistList, l2, empties it and appends its contents, in order, to the receiver. For ex-
ample, if l1 contains a, b, c and l2 contains d, e, f , then after calling l1.absorb(l2), l1 will
contain a, b, c, d, e, f and l2 will be empty. This method should run in O(log n) time.
Exercise 4.13. Using the ideas from the space-efficient linked-list, SEList, design and im-
plement a space-efficient SSet, SESSet. Do this by storing the data, in order, in an SEList
and then storing the blocks of this SEList in an SSet. If the original SSet implementation
uses O(n) space to store n elements, then the SESSet will use enough space for n elements
plus O(n/b + b) wasted space.
Exercise 4.14. Using an SSet as your underlying structure, design and implement an ap-
plication that reads a (large) text file and allow you to search, interactively, for any sub-
string contained in the text. As the user types their query, a matching part of the text (if
any) should appear as a result.
Hint 1: Every substring is a prefix of some suffix, so it suffices to store all suffixes of the
text file.
Hint 2: Any suffix can be represented compactly as a single integer indicating where the
suffix begins in the text.
Test your application on some large texts like some of the books available at Project Guten-
berg [1]. If done correctly, your applications will be very responsive; there should be no
noticeable lag between typing keystrokes and the results appearing.
92
4. Skiplists 4.5. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 4.15. (This excercise is to be done after reading about binary search trees, in
Section 6.2.) Compare skiplists with binary search trees in the following ways:
1. Explain how removing some edges of a skiplist lead to a structure that looks like a
binary tree and that is similar to a binary search tree.
2. Skiplists and binary search trees each use about the same number of pointers (2 per
node). Skiplists make better use of those pointers, though. Explain why.
93
4. Skiplists 4.5. Discussion and Exercises
94
Chapter 5
Hash Tables
Hash tables are an efficient method of storing a small number, n, of integers from a large
range U = {0, . . . , 2w − 1}. The term hash table includes a broad range of data structures.
This chapter focuses on one of the most common implementations of hash tables, namely
hashing with chaining.
Very often hash tables store data that are not integers. In this case, an integer hash
code is associated with each data item and this hash code is used in the hash table. The
second part of this chapter discusses how such hash codes are generated.
Some of the methods used in this chapter require random choices of integers in
some specific range. In the code samples, some of these “random” integers are hard-coded
constants. These constants were obtained using random bits generated from atmospheric
noise.
5.1 ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining
A ChainedHashTable data structure uses hashing with chaining to store data as an array, t,
of lists. An integer, n, keeps track of the total number of items in all lists (see Figure 5.1):
ChainedHashTable
List<T>[] t;
int n;
The hash value of a data item x, denoted hash(x) is a value in the range {0, . . . , t.length − 1}.
All items with hash value i are stored in the list at t[i]. To ensure that lists don’t get too
long, we maintain the invariant
n ≤ t.length
so that the average number of elements stored in one of these lists is n/t.length ≤ 1.
95
5. Hash Tables 5.1. ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining
t 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
b d i x h j f m ` k
c g e
a
Figure 5.1: An example of a ChainedHashTable with n = 14 and t.length = 16. In this
example hash(x) = 6
To add an element, x, to the hash table, we first check if the length of t needs to be
increased and, if so, we grow t. With this out of the way we hash x to get an integer, i, in
the range {0, . . . , t.length − 1} and we append x to the list t[i]:
ChainedHashTable
boolean add(T x) {
if (find(x) != null) return false;
if (n+1 > t.length) resize();
t[hash(x)].add(x);
n++;
return true;
}
Growing the table, if necessary, involves doubling the length of t and reinserting all el-
ements into the new table. This is exactly the same strategy used in the implementation
of ArrayStack and the same result applies: The cost of growing is only constant when
amortized over a sequence of insertions (see Lemma 2.1 on page 31).
Besides growing, the only other work done when adding x to a ChainedHashTable
involves appending x to the list t[hash(x)]. For any of the list implementations described
in Chapters 2 or 3, this takes only constant time.
To remove an element x from the hash table we iterate over the list t[hash(x)] until
we find x so that we can remove it:
ChainedHashTable
T remove(T x) {
Iterator<T> it = t[hash(x)].iterator();
while (it.hasNext()) {
T y = it.next();
if (y.equals(x)) {
it.remove();
n--;
return y;
96
5. Hash Tables 5.1. ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining
}
}
return null;
}
This takes O(nhash(x) ) time, where ni denotes the length of the list stored at t[i].
Searching for the element x in a hash table is similar. We perform a linear search
on the list t[hash(x)]:
ChainedHashTable
T find(Object x) {
for (T y : t[hash(x)])
if (y.equals(x))
return y;
return null;
}
Again, this takes time proportional to the length of the list t[hash(x)].
The performance of a hash table depends critically on the choice of the hash func-
tion. A good hash function will spread the elements evenly among the t.length lists, so
that the expected size of the list t[hash(x)] is O(n/t.length) = O(1). On the other hand, a
bad hash function will hash all values (including x) to the same table location, in which
case the size of the list t[hash(x)] will be n. In the next section we describe a good hash
function.
5.1.1 Multiplicative Hashing
Multiplicative hashing is an efficient method of generating hash values based on modular
arithmetic (discussed in Section 2.3) and integer division. It uses the div operator, which
calculates the integral part of a quotient, while discarding the remainder. Formally, for
any integers a ≥ 0 and b ≥ 1, a div b = ba/bc.
In multiplicative hashing, we use a hash table of size 2d for some integer d (called
the dimension). The formula for hashing an integer x ∈ {0, . . . , 2w − 1} is
hash(x) = ((z · x) mod 2w ) div 2w−d .
Here, z is a randomly chosen odd integer in {1, . . . , 2w − 1}. This hash function can be real-
ized very efficiently by observing that, by default, operations on integers are already done
modulo 2w where w is the number of bits in an integer. (See Figure 5.2.) Furthermore,
97
5. Hash Tables 5.1. ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining
2w (4294967296) 100000000000000000000000000000000
z (4102541685) 11110100100001111101000101110101
x (42) 00000000000000000000000000101010
z·x 10100000011110010010000101110100110010
(z · x) mod 2w 00011110010010000101110100110010
((z · x) mod 2w ) div 2w−d 00011110
Figure 5.2: The operation of the multiplicative hash function with w = 32 and d = 8.
integer division by 2w−d is equivalent to dropping the rightmost w − d bits in a binary rep-
resentation (which is implemented by shifting the bits right by w − d). In this way, the code
that implements the above formula is simpler than the formula itself:
ChainedHashTable
int hash(Object x) {
return (z * x.hashCode()) >>> (w-d);
}
The following lemma, whose proof is deferred until later in this section, shows that
multiplicative hashing does a good job of avoiding collisions:
Lemma 5.1. Let x and y be any two values in {0, . . . , 2w − 1} with x , y. Then Pr{hash(x) =
hash(y)} ≤ 2/2d .
With Lemma 5.1, the performance of remove(x), and find(x) are easy to analyze:
Lemma 5.2. For any data value x, the expected length of the list t[hash(x)] is at most nx + 2,
where nx is the number of occurrences of x in the hash table.
Proof. Let S be the (multi-)set of elements stored in the hash table that are not equal to x.
For an element y ∈ S, define the indicator variable
1 if hash(x) = hash(y)
Iy =
0 otherwise
and notice that, by Lemma 5.1, E[Iy ] ≤ 2/2d = 2/t.length. The expected length of the list
98
5. Hash Tables 5.1. ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining
t[hash(x)] is given by
X
E [t[hash(x)].size()] = E nx + Iy
y∈S
X
= nx + E[Iy ]
y∈S
X
≤ nx + 2/t.length
y∈S
X
≤ nx + 2/n
y∈S
≤ nx + (n − nx )2/n
≤ nx + 2 ,
as required.
Now, we want to prove Lemma 5.1, but first we need a result from number theory.
P
In the following proof, we use the notation (br , . . . , b0 )2 to denote ri=0 bi 2i , where each bi is
a bit, either 0 or 1. In other words, (br , . . . , b0 )2 is the integer whose binary representation
is given by br , . . . , b0 . We use ? to denote a bit of unknown value.
Lemma 5.3. Let S be the set of odd integers in {1, . . . , 2w − 1}, Let q and i be any two elements in
S. Then there is exactly one value z ∈ S such that zq mod 2w = i.
Proof. Since the number of choices for z and i is the same, it is sufficient to prove that there
is at most one value z ∈ S that satisfies zq mod 2w = i.
Suppose, for the sake of contradiction, that there are two such values z and z0 , with
z > z0 . Then
zq mod 2w = z0 q mod 2w = i
So
(z − z0 )q mod 2w = 0
But this means that
(z − z0 )q = k2w (5.1)
for some integer k. Thinking in terms of binary numbers, we have
(z − z0 )q = k · (1, 0, . . . , 0)2 ,
| {z }
w
so that the w trailing bits in the binary representation of (z − z0 )q are all 0’s.
99
5. Hash Tables 5.1. ChainedHashTable: Hashing with Chaining
Furthermore k , 0 since q , 0 and z − z0 , 0. Since q is odd, it has no trailing 0’s in
its binary representation:
q = (?, . . . , ?, 1)2 .
Since |z − z0 | < 2w , z − z0 has fewer than w trailing 0’s in its binary representation:
z − z0 = (?, . . . , ?, 1, 0, . . . , 0)2 .
| {z }
<w
Therefore, the product (z − z0 )q has fewer than w trailing 0’s in its binary representation:
(z − z0 )q = (?, · · · , ?, 1, 0, . . . , 0)2 .
| {z }
<w
Therefore (z − z0 )q cannot satisfy (5.1), yielding a contradiction and completing the proof.
The utility of Lemma 5.3 comes from the following observation: If z is chosen
uniformly at random from S, then zt is uniformly distributed over S. In the following
proof, it helps to think of the binary representation of z, which consists of w − 1 random
bits followed by a 1.
Proof of Lemma 5.1. First we note that the condition hash(x) = hash(y) is equivalent to the
statement “the highest-order d bits of zx mod 2w and the highest-order d bits of zy mod 2w
are the same.” A necessary condition of that statement is that the highest-order d bits in
the binary representation of z(x − y) mod 2w are either all 0’s or all 1’s. That is,
z(x − y) mod 2w = (0, . . . , 0, ?, . . . , ? )2 (5.2)
| {z } | {z }
d w−d
when zx mod 2w > zy mod 2w or
z(x − y) mod 2w = (1, . . . , 1, ?, . . . , ? )2 . (5.3)
| {z } | {z }
d w−d
when zx mod 2w < zy mod 2w . Therefore, we only have to bound the probability that z(x −
y) mod 2w looks like (5.2) or (5.3).
Let q be the unique odd integer such that (x−y) mod 2w = q2r for some integer r ≥ 0.
By Lemma 5.3, the binary representation of zq mod 2w has w − 1 random bits, followed by
a 1:
zq mod 2w = (bw−1 , . . . , b1 , 1)2
| {z }
w−1
100
5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
Therefore, the binary representation of z(x − y) mod 2w = zq2r mod 2w has w − r − 1 random
bits, followed by a 1, followed by r 0’s:
z(x − y) mod 2w = zq2r mod 2w = (bw−r−1 , . . . , b1 , 1, 0, 0, . . . , 0)2
| {z } | {z }
w−r−1 r
We can now finish the proof: If r > w − d, then the d higher order bits of z(x − y) mod 2w
contain both 0’s and 1’s, so the probability that z(x − y) mod 2w looks like (5.2) or (5.3) is
0. If r = w − d, then the probability of looking like (5.2) is 0, but the probability of looking
like (5.3) is 1/2d−1 = 2/2d (since we must have b1 , . . . , bd−1 = 1, . . . , 1). If r < w − d then we
must have bw−r−1 , . . . , bw−r−d = 0, . . . , 0 or bw−r−1 , . . . , bw−r−d = 1, . . . , 1. The probability of each
of these cases is 1/2d and they are mutually exclusive, so the probability of either of these
cases is 2/2d . This completes the proof.
5.1.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the ChainedHashTable data struc-
ture:
Theorem 5.1. A ChainedHashTable implements the USet interface. Ignoring the cost of calls
to grow(), a ChainedHashTable supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in
O(1) expected time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty ChainedHashTable, any sequence of m add(x)
and remove(x) operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to grow().
5.2 LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
The ChainedHashTable data structure uses an array of lists, where the ith list stores all
elements x such that hash(x) = i. An alternative, called open addressing is to store the
elements directly in an array, t, with each array location in t storing at most one value.
This is the approach taken by the LinearHashTable described in this section. In some
places, this data structure is described as open addressing with linear probing.
The main idea behind a LinearHashTable is that we would, ideally, like to store
the element x with hash value i = hash(x) in the table location t[i]. If we can’t do this
(because some element is already stored there) then we try to store it at location t[(i +
1) mod t.length]; if that’s not possible, then we try t[(i + 2) mod t.length], and so on,
until we find a place for x.
There are three types of entries stored in t:
101
5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
1. data values: actual values in the USet that we are representing;
2. null values: at array locations where no data has ever been stored; and
3. del values: at array locations where data was once stored but that has since been
deleted.
In addition to the counter, n, that keeps track of the number of elements in the Linear-
HashTable, a counter, q, keeps track of the number of elements of Types 1 and 3. That is,
q is equal to n plus the number of del values in t. To make this work efficiently, we need t
to be considerably larger than q, so that there are lots of null values in t. The operations
on a LinearHashTable therefore maintain the invariant that t.length ≥ 2q.
To summarize, a LinearHashTable contains an array, t, that stores data elements,
and integers n and q that keep track of the number of data elements and non-null values
of t, respectively. Because many hash functions only work for table sizes that are a power
of 2, we also keep an integer d and maintain the invariant that t.length = 2d .
LinearHashTable
T[] t; // the table
int n; // the size
int d; // t.length = 2ˆd
int q; // number of non-null entries in t
The find(x) operation in a LinearHashTable is simple. We start at array entry t[i]
where i = hash(x) and search entries t[i], t[(i+1) mod t.length], t[(i+2) mod t.length],
and so on, until we find an index i0 such that, either, t[i0 ] = x, or t[i0 ] = null. In the former
case we return t[i0 ]. In the latter case, we conclude that x is not contained in the hash table
and return null.
LinearHashTable
T find(T x) {
int i = hash(x);
while (t[i] != null) {
if (t[i] != del && x.equals(t[i])) return t[i];
i = (i == t.length-1) ? 0 : i + 1; // increment i (mod t.length)
}
return null;
}
The add(x) operation is also fairly easy to implement. After checking that x is
not already stored in the table (using find(x)), we search t[i], t[(i + 1) mod t.length],
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5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
t[(i + 2) mod t.length], and so on, until we find a null or del and store x at that location,
increment n, and q, if appropriate.:
LinearHashTable
boolean add(T x) {
if (find(x) != null) return false;
if (2*(q+1) > t.length) resize(); // max 50% occupancy
int i = hash(x);
while (t[i] != null && t[i] != del)
i = (i == t.length-1) ? 0 : i + 1; // increment i (mod t.length)
if (t[i] == null) q++;
n++;
t[i] = x;
return true;
}
By now, the implementation of the remove(x) operation should be obvious. We
search t[i], t[(i + 1) mod t.length], t[(i + 2) mod t.length], and so on until we find an
index i0 such that t[i0 ] = x or t[i0 ] = null. In the former case, we set t[i0 ] = del and return
true. In the latter case we conclude that x was not stored in the table (and therefore cannot
be deleted) and return false.
LinearHashTable
T remove(T x) {
int i = hash(x);
while (t[i] != null) {
T y = t[i];
if (y != del && x.equals(y)) {
t[i] = del;
n--;
if (8*n < t.length) resize(); // min 12.5% occupancy
return y;
}
i = (i == t.length-1) ? 0 : i + 1; // increment i (mod t.length)
}
return null;
}
The correctness of the find(x), add(x), and remove(x) methods is easy to verify,
though it relies on the use of del values. Notice that none of these operations ever sets
a non-null entry to null. Therefore, when we reach an index i0 such that t[i0 ] = null,
this is a proof that the element, x, that we are searching for is not stored in the table; t[i0 ]
has always been null, so there is no reason that a previous add(x) operation would have
proceeded beyond index i0 .
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5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
The resize() method is called by add(x) when the number of non-null entries
exceeds n/2 or by remove(x) when the number of data entries is less than t.length/8. The
resize() method works like the resize() methods in other array-based data structures.
We find the smallest non-negative integer d such that 2d ≥ 3n. We reallocate the array t
so that it has size 2d and then we insert all the elements in the old version of t into the
newly-resized copy of t. While doing this we reset q equal to n since the newly-allocated
t has no del values.
LinearHashTable
void resize() {
d = 1;
while ((1<<d) < 3*n) d++;
T[] told = t;
t = newArray(1<<d);
q = n;
// insert everything in told
for (int k = 0; k < told.length; k++) {
if (told[k] != null && told[k] != del) {
int i = hash(told[k]);
while (t[i] != null)
i = (i == t.length-1) ? 0 : i + 1;
t[i] = told[k];
}
}
}
5.2.1 Analysis of Linear Probing
Notice that each operation, add(x), remove(x), or find(x), finishes as soon as (or before) it
discovers the first null entry in t. The intuition behind the analysis of linear probing is
that, since at least half the elements in t are equal to null, an operation should not take
long to complete because it will very quickly come across a null entry. We shouldn’t rely
too heavily on this intuition though, because it would lead us to (the incorrect) conclusion
that the expected number of locations in t examined by an operation is at most 2.
For the rest of this section, we will assume that all hash values are independently
and uniformly distributed in {0, . . . , t.length − 1}. This is not a realistic assumption, but it
will make it possible for us to analyze linear probing. Later in this section we will describe
a method, called tabulation hashing, that produces a hash function that is “good enough”
for linear probing. We will also assume that all indices into the positions of t are taken
modulo t.length, so that t[i] is really a shorthand for t[i mod t.length].
We say that a run of length k that starts at i occurs when t[i], t[i + 1], . . . , t[i + k − 1]
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5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
are all non-null and t[i − 1] = t[i + k] = null. The number of non-null elements of t
is exactly q and the add(x) method ensures that, at all times, q ≤ t.length/2. There are q
elements x1 , . . . , xq that have been inserted into t since the last rebuild() operation. By our
assumption, each of these has a hash value, hash(xj ), that is uniform and independent of
the rest. With this setup, we can prove the main lemma required to analyze linear probing.
Lemma 5.4. Fix a value i ∈ {0, . . . , t.length − 1}. Then the probability that a run of length k
starts at i is O(ck ) for some constant 0 < c < 1.
Proof. If a run of length k starts at i, then there are exactly k elements xj such that
hash(xj ) ∈ {i, . . . , i + k − 1}. The probability that this occurs is exactly
! !k !q−k
q k t.length − k
pk = ,
k t.length t.length
since, for each choice of k elements, these k elements must hash to one of the k locations
and the remaining q − k elements must hash to the other t.length − k table locations.1
In the following derivation we will cheat a little and replace r! with (r/e)r . Stirling’s
√
Approximation (Section 1.2.2) shows that this is only a factor of O( r) from the truth.
This is just done to make the derivation simpler; Exercise 5.4 asks the reader to redo the
calculation more rigorously using Stirling’s Approximation in its entirety.
The value of pk is maximized when t.length is minimum, and the data structure
maintains the invariant that t.length ≥ 2q, so
! !k !q−k
q k 2q − k
pk ≤
k 2q 2q
! !k !q−k
q! k 2q − k
=
(q − k)!k! 2q 2q
! ! k !q−k
qq k 2q − k
≈ [Stirling’s approximation]
(q − k)q−k k k 2q 2q
! !k !q−k
qk qq−k k 2q − k
=
(q − k)q−k k k 2q 2q
!k !q−k
qk q(2q − k)
=
2qk 2q(q − k)
k !q−k
1 (2q − k)
=
2 2(q − k)
1 Note that p is greater than the probability that a run of length k starts at i, since the definition of p does
k k
not include the requirement t[i − 1] = t[i + k] = null.
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5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
k !q−k
1 k
= 1+
2 2(q − k)
√ !k
e
≤ .
2
(In the last step, we use the inequality (1 + 1/x)x ≤ e, which holds for all x > 0.) Since
√
e/2 < 0.824360636 < 1, this completes the proof.
Using Lemma 5.4 to prove upper-bounds on the expected running time of find(x),
add(x), and remove(x) is now fairly straight-forward. Consider the simplest case, where we
execute find(x) for some value x that has never been stored in the LinearHashTable. In
this case, i = hash(x) is a random value in {0, . . . , t.length − 1} independent of the contents
of t. If i is part of a run of length k then the time it takes to execute the find(x) operation
is at most O(1 + k). Thus, the expected running time can be upper-bounded by
t.length
X X ∞
1
O 1 + k Pr{i is part of a run of length k} .
t.length
i=1 k=0
Note that each run of length k contributes to the inner sum k times for a total contribution
of k 2 , so the above sum can be rewritten as
t.length
X X ∞
1
O 1 + k 2 Pr{i starts a run of length k}
t.length
i=1 k=0
t.length
X X ∞
1
≤ O 1 + k 2 pk
t.length
i=1 k=0
∞
X
= O 1 + k 2 pk
k=0
∞
X
= O 1 + k · O(c )
2 k
k=0
= O(1) .
P∞ 2 · O(ck )
The last step in this derivation comes from the fact that k=0 k is an exponentially
decreasing series.2 Therefore, we conclude that the expected running time of the find(x)
operation for a value x that is not contained in a LinearHashTable is O(1).
If we ignore the cost of the resize() operation, the above analysis gives us all we
need to analyze the cost of operations on a LinearHashTable.
2 In the terminology of many calculus texts, this sum passes the ratio test: There exists a positive integer k
0
(k+1)2 ck+1
such that, for all k ≥ k0 , < 1.
k 2 ck
106
5. Hash Tables 5.2. LinearHashTable: Linear Probing
First of all, the analysis of find(x) given above applies to the add(x) operation when
x is not contained in the table. To analyze the find(x) operation when x is contained in
the table, we need only note that this is the same as the cost of the add(x) operation that
previously added x to the table. Finally, the cost of a remove(x) operation is the same as
the cost of a find(x) operation.
In summary, if we ignore the cost of calls to resize(), all operations on a Linear-
HashTable run in O(1) expected time. Accounting for the cost of resize can be done using
the same type of amortized analysis performed for the ArrayStack data structure in Sec-
tion 2.1.
5.2.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the LinearHashTable data struc-
ture:
Theorem 5.2. A LinearHashTable implements the USet interface. Ignoring the cost of calls
to resize(), a LinearHashTable supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in
O(1) expected time per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty LinearHashTable, any sequence of m add(x)
and remove(x) operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to resize().
5.2.3 Tabulation Hashing
While analyzing the LinearHashTable structure, we made a very strong assumption: That
for any set of elements, {x1 , . . . , xn }, the hash values hash(x1 ), . . . , hash(xn ) are independently
and uniformly distributed over {0, . . . , t.length − 1}. One way to imagine getting this is to
have a giant array, tab, of length 2w , where each entry is a random w-bit integer, indepen-
dent of all the other entries. In this way, we could implement hash(x) by extracting a d-bit
integer from tab[x.hashCode()]:
LinearHashTable
int idealHash(T x) {
return tab[x.hashCode() >>> w-d];
}
Unfortunately, storing an array of size 2w is prohibitive in terms of memory usage.
The approach used by tabulation hashing is to, instead, treat w-bit integers as being com-
prised of w/r integers, each having only r bits. In this way, tabulation hashing only needs
w/r arrays each of length 2r . All the entries in these arrays are independent w-bit inte-
gers. To obtain the value of hash(x) we split x.hashCode() up into w/r r-bit integers and
107
5. Hash Tables 5.3. Hash Codes
use these as indices into these arrays. We then combine all these values with the bitwise
exclusive-or operator to obtain hash(x). The following code shows how this works when
w = 32 and r = 4:
LinearHashTable
int hash(T x) {
int h = x.hashCode();
return (tab[0][h&0xff]
ˆ tab[1][(h>>>8)&0xff]
ˆ tab[2][(h>>>16)&0xff]
ˆ tab[3][(h>>>24)&0xff])
>>> (w-d);
}
In this case, tab is a 2-dimensional array with 4 columns and 232/4 = 256 rows.
One can easily verify that, for any x, hash(x) is uniformly distributed over {0, . . . , 2d −
1}. With a little work, one can even verify that any pair of values have independent hash
values. This implies tabulation hashing could be used in place of multiplicative hashing
for the ChainedHashTable implementation.
However, it is not true that any set of n distinct values gives a set of n independent
hash values. Nevertheless, when tabulation hashing is used, the bound of Theorem 5.2
still holds. References for this are provided at the end of this chapter.
5.3 Hash Codes
The hash tables discussed in the previous section are used to associate data with integer
keys consisting of w bits. In many cases, we have keys that are not integers. They may be
strings, objects, arrays, or other compound structures. To use hash tables for these types
of data, we must map these data types to w-bit hash codes. Hash code mappings should
have the following properties:
1. If x and y are equal, then x.hashCode() and y.hashCode() are equal.
2. If x and y are not equal, then the probability that x.hashCode() = y.hashCode() should
be small (close to 1/2w ).
The first property ensures that if we store x in a hash table and later look up a
value y equal to x, then we will find x—as we should. The second property minimizes the
loss from converting our objects to integers. It ensures that unequal objects usually have
different hash codes and so are likely to be stored at different locations in our hash table.
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5. Hash Tables 5.3. Hash Codes
5.3.1 Hash Codes for Primitive Data Types
Small primitive data types like char, byte, int, and float are usually easy to find hash
codes for. These data types always have a binary representation and this binary represen-
tation usually consists of w or fewer bits. (For example, in Java, byte is an 8-bit type and
float is a 32-bit type.) In these cases, we just treat these bits as the representation of an
integer in the range {0, . . . , 2w − 1}. If two values are different, they get different hash codes.
If they are the same, they get the same hash code.
A few primitive data types are made up of more than w bits, usually cw bits for
some constant integer c. (Java’s long and double types are examples of this with c = 2.)
These data types can be treated as compound objects made of c parts, as described in the
next section.
5.3.2 Hash Codes for Compound Objects
For a compound object, we want to create a hash code by combining the individual hash
codes of the object’s constituent parts. This is not as easy as it sounds. Although one can
find many hacks for this (for example, combining the hash codes with bitwise exclusive-or
operations), many of these hacks turn out to be easy to foil (see Exercises 5.7–5.9). How-
ever, if one is willing to do arithmetic with 2w bits of precision, then there are simple and
robust methods available. Suppose we have an object made up of several parts P0 , . . . , Pr−1
whose hash codes are x0 , . . . , xr−1 . Then we can choose mutually independent random w-bit
integers z0 , . . . , zr−1 and a random 2w-bit odd integer z and compute a hash code for our
object with r−1
X
h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = z zi xi mod 2 div 2w .
2w
i=0
Note that this hash code has a final step (multiplying by z and dividing by 2w ) that uses
the multiplicative hash function from Section 5.1.1 to take the 2w-bit intermediate result
and reduce it to a w-bit final result. Here is an example of this method applied to a simple
compound object with 3 parts x0, x1, and x2:
Point3D
int hashCode() {
long[] z = {0x2058cc50L, 0xcb19137eL, 0x2cb6b6fdL}; // random
long zz = 0xbea0107e5067d19dL; // random
long h0 = x0.hashCode() & ((1L<<32)-1); // unsigned int to long
long h1 = x1.hashCode() & ((1L<<32)-1);
long h2 = x2.hashCode() & ((1L<<32)-1);
109
5. Hash Tables 5.3. Hash Codes
return (int)(((z[0]*h0 + z[1]*h1 + z[2]*h2)*zz) >>> 32);
}
The following theorem shows that, in addition to being straightforward to implement, this
method is provably good:
Theorem 5.3. Let x0 , . . . , xr−1 and y0 , . . . , yr−1 each be sequences of w bit integers in {0, . . . , 2w −1}
and assume xi , yi for at least one index i ∈ {0, . . . , r − 1}. Then
Pr{h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h(y0 , . . . , yr−1 )} ≤ 3/2w .
Proof. We will first ignore the final multiplicative hashing step and see how that step con-
tributes later. Define:
Xr−1
h0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = zj xj mod 22w .
j=0
Suppose that h0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h0 (y0 , . . . , yr−1 ). We can rewrite this as:
zi (xi − yi ) mod 22w = t (5.4)
where
Xi−1 r−1
X
t = zj (yj − xj ) + zj (yj − xj ) mod 22w
j=0 j=i+1
If we assume, without loss of generality that xi > yi , then (5.4) becomes
zi (xi − yi ) = t , (5.5)
since each of zi and (xi −yi ) is at most 2w −1, so their product is at most 22w −2w+1 +1 < 22w −1.
By assumption, xi − yi , 0, so (5.5) has at most one solution in zi . Therefore, since zi and
t are independent (z0 , . . . , zr−1 are mutually independent), the probability that we select zi
so that h0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h0 (y0 , . . . , yr−1 ) is at most 1/2w .
The final step of the hash function is to apply multiplicative hashing to reduce
our 2w-bit intermediate result h0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) to a w-bit final result h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ). By Theo-
rem 5.3, if h0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) , h0 (y0 , . . . , yr−1 ), then Pr{h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h(y0 , . . . , yr−1 )} ≤ 2/2w .
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5. Hash Tables 5.3. Hash Codes
To summarize,
h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 )
Pr
= h(y0 , . . . , yr−1 )
h0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h0 (y0 , . . . , yr−1 ) or
0
= Pr
h (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) , h0 (y0 , . . . , yr−1 )
and zh0 (x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) div 2w = zh0 (y0 , . . . , yr−1 ) div 2w
≤ 1/2w + 2/2w = 3/2w .
5.3.3 Hash Codes for Arrays and Strings
The method from the previous section works well for objects that have a fixed, constant,
number of components. However, it breaks down when we want to use it with objects
that have a variable number of components since it requires a random w-bit integer zi for
each component. We could use a pseudorandom sequence to generate as many zi ’s as we
need, but then the zi ’s are not mutually independent, and it becomes difficult to prove that
the pseudorandom numbers don’t interact badly with the hash function we are using. In
particular, the values of t and zi in the proof of Theorem 5.3 are no longer independent.
A more rigorous approach is to base our hash codes on polynomials over prime
fields; these are just regular polynomials that are evaluated modulo some prime number,
p. This method is based on the following theorem, which says that polynomials over prime
fields behave pretty-much like usual polynomials:
Theorem 5.4. Let p be a prime number, and let f (z) = x0 z0 + x1 z1 + · · · + xr−1 zr−1 be a non-
trivial polynomial with coefficients xi ∈ {0, . . . , p − 1}. Then the equation f (z) mod p = 0 has at
most r − 1 solutions for z ∈ {0, . . . , p − 1}.
To use Theorem 5.4, we hash a sequence of integers x0 , . . . , xr−1 with each xi ∈
{0, . . . , p − 2} using a random integer z ∈ {0, . . . , p − 1} via the formula
h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = x0 z0 + · · · + xr−1 zr−1 + (p − 1)zr mod p .
Note the extra (p − 1)zr term at the end of the formula. It helps to think of (p − 1)
as the last element, xr , in the sequence x0 , . . . , xr . Note that this element differs from every
other element in the sequence (each of which is in the set {0, . . . , p − 2}). We can think of
p − 1 as an end-of-sequence marker.
The following theorem, which considers the case of two sequences of the same
length, shows that this hash function gives a good return for the small amount of random-
ization needed to choose z:
111
5. Hash Tables 5.3. Hash Codes
Theorem 5.5. Let p > 2w + 1 be a prime, let x0 , . . . , xr−1 and y0 , . . . , yr−1 each be sequences of
w-bit integers in {0, . . . , 2w − 1}, and assume xi , yi for at least one index i ∈ {0, . . . , r − 1}. Then
Pr{h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h(y0 , . . . , yr−1 )} ≤ (r − 1)/p} .
Proof. The equation h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h(y0 , . . . , yr−1 ) can be rewritten as
(x0 − y0 )z0 + · · · + (xr−1 − yr−1 )zr−1 mod p = 0. (5.6)
Since xi , yi , this polynomial is non-trivial. Therefore, by Theorem 5.4, it has at most r −1
solutions in z. The probability that we pick z to be one of these solutions is therefore at
most (r − 1)/p.
Note that this hash function also deals with the case in which two sequences have
different lengths, even when one of the sequences is a prefix of the other. This is because
this function effectively hashes the infinite sequence
x0 , . . . , xr−1 , p − 1, 0, 0, . . . .
This guarantees that if we have two sequences of length r and r 0 with r > r 0 , then these two
sequences differ at index i = r. In this case, (5.6) becomes
i=r 0 −1 i=r−1
X X
r0 r
i
(xi − yi )z + (xr 0 − p + 1)z + xi z + (p − 1)z mod p = 0 ,
i
i=0 i=r 0 +1
which, by Theorem 5.4, has at most r solutions in z. This combined with Theorem 5.5
suffice to prove the following more general theorem:
Theorem 5.6. Let p > 2w + 1 be a prime, let x0 , . . . , xr−1 and y0 , . . . , yr 0 −1 be distinct sequences of
w-bit integers in {0, . . . , 2w − 1}. Then
Pr{h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = h(y0 , . . . , yr−1 )} ≤ max{r, r 0 }/p .
The following example code shows how this hash function is applied to an object
that contains an array, x, of values:
GeomVector
int hashCode() {
long p = (1L<<32)-5; // prime: 2ˆ32 - 5
long z = 0x64b6055aL; // 32 bits from random.org
int z2 = 0x5067d19d; // random odd 32 bit number
long s = 0;
long zi = 1;
112
5. Hash Tables 5.4. Discussion and Exercises
for (int i = 0; i < x.length; i++) {
long xi = (x[i].hashCode() * z2) >>> 1; // reduce to 31 bits
s = (s + zi * xi) % p;
zi = (zi * z) % p;
}
s = (s + zi * (p-1)) % p;
return (int)s;
}
The above code sacrifices some collision probability for implementation conve-
nience. In particular, it applies the multiplicative hash function from Section 5.1.1, with
d = 31 to reduce x[i].hashCode() to a 31-bit value. This is so that the additions and mul-
tiplications that are done modulo the prime p = 232 − 5 can be carried out using unsigned
63-bit arithmetic. This means that the probability of two different sequences, the longer
of which has length r, having the same hash code is at most
2/231 + r/(232 − 5)
rather than the r/(232 − 5) specified in Theorem 5.6.
5.4 Discussion and Exercises
Hash tables and hash codes are an enormous and active area of research that is just touched
upon in this chapter. The online Bibliography on Hashing [10] contains nearly 2000 en-
tries.
A variety of different hash table implementations exist. The one described in Sec-
tion 5.1 is known as hashing with chaining (each array entry contains a chain (List) of
elements). Hashing with chaining dates back to an internal IBM memorandum authored
by H. P. Luhn and dated January 1953. This memorandum also seems to be one of the
earliest references to linked lists.
An alternative to hashing with chaining is that used by open addressing schemes,
where all data is stored directly in an array. These schemes include the LinearHashTable
structure of Section 5.2. This idea was also proposed, independently, by a group at IBM
in the 1950s. Open addressing schemes must deal with the problem of collision resolution:
the case where two values hash to the same array location. Different strategies exist for
collision resolution and these provide different performance guarantees and often require
more sophisticated hash functions than the ones described here.
Yet another category of hash table implementations are the so-called perfect hashing
methods. These are methods in which find(x) operations take O(1) time in the worst-case.
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5. Hash Tables 5.4. Discussion and Exercises
For static data sets, this can be accomplished by finding perfect hash functions for the data;
these are functions that map each piece of data to a unique array location. For data that
changes over time, perfect hashing methods include FKS two-level hash tables [29, 24] and
cuckoo hashing [57].
The hash functions presented in this chapter are probably among the most practi-
cal currently known methods that can be proven to work well for any set of data. Other
provably good methods date back to the pioneering work of Carter and Wegman who in-
troduced the notion of universal hashing and described several hash functions for different
scenarios [14]. Tabulation hashing, described in Section 5.2.3, is due to Carter and Weg-
man [14], but its analysis, when applied to linear probing (and several other hash table
schemes) is due to Pǎtraşcu and Thorup [62].
The idea of multiplicative hashing is very old and seems to be part of the hashing
folklore [48, Section 6.4]. However, the idea of choosing the multiplier z to be a random
odd number, and the analysis in Section 5.1.1 is due to Dietzfelbinger et al. [23]. This
version of multiplicative hashing is one of the simplest, but its collision probability of 2/2d
is a factor of 2 larger than what one could expect with a random function from 2w → 2d .
The multiply-add hashing method uses the function
h(x) = ((zx + b) mod 22w ) div 22w−d
where z and b are each randomly chosen from {0, . . . , 22w − 1}. Multiply-add hashing has a
collision probability of only 1/2d [21], but requires 2w-bit precision arithmetic.
There are a number of methods of obtaining hash codes from fixed-length se-
quences of w-bit integers. One particularly fast method [11] is the function
r/2−1
X
h(x0 , . . . , xr−1 ) = ((x2i + a2i ) mod 2w )((x2i+1 + a2i+1 ) mod 2w ) mod 22w
i=0
where r is even and a0 , . . . , ar−1 are randomly chosen from {0, . . . , 2w }. This yields a 2w-bit
hash code that has collision probability 1/2w . This can be reduced to a w-bit hash code
using multiplicative (or multiply-add) hashing. This method is fast because it requires
only r/2 2w-bit multiplications whereas the method described in Section 5.3.2 requires r
multiplications. (The mod operations occur implicitly by using w and 2w-bit arithmetic
for the additions and multiplications, respectively.)
The method from Section 5.3.3 of using polynomials over prime fields to hash
variable-length arrays and strings is due to Dietzfelbinger et al. [22]. It is, unfortunately,
not very fast. This is due to its use of the mod operator which relies on a costly machine
114
5. Hash Tables 5.4. Discussion and Exercises
instruction. Some variants of this method choose the prime p to be one of the form 2w −1, in
which case the mod operator can be replaced with addition (+) and bitwise-and (&) opera-
tions [47, Section 3.6]. Another option is to apply one of the fast methods for fixed-length
strings to blocks of length c for some constant c > 1 and then apply the prime field method
to the resulting sequence of dr/ce hash codes.
Exercise 5.1. A certain university assigns each of its students student numbers the first
time they register for any course. These numbers are sequential integers that started at
0 many years ago and are now in the millions. Suppose we have a class of 100 first year
students and we want to assign them hash codes based on their student numbers. Does it
make more sense to use the first two digits or the last two digits of their student number?
Justify your answer.
Exercise 5.2. Consider the multiplicative hashing scheme in Section 5.1.1, and suppose
n = 2d and d ≤ w/2.
1. Show that, for any choice of the muliplier, z, there exists n values that all have the
same hash code. (Hint: This is easy, and doesn’t require any number theory.)
2. Given the multiplier, z, describe n values that all have the same hash code. (Hint:
This is harder, and requires some basic number theory.)
Exercise 5.3. Prove that the bound 2/2d in Lemma 5.1 is the best possible by showing
that, if x = 2w−d−2 and y = 3x, then Pr{hash(x) = hash(y)} = 2/2d . (Hint look at the binary
representations of zx and z3x and use the fact that z3x = zx+2zx.)
Exercise 5.4. Reprove Lemma 5.4 using the full version of Stirling’s Approximation given
in Section 1.2.2.
Exercise 5.5. Consider the following the simplified version of the code for adding an ele-
ment x to a LinearHashTable, which simply stores x in the first null array entry it finds.
Explain why this could be very slow by giving an example of a sequence of O(n) add(x),
remove(x), and find(x) operations that would take on the order of n2 time to execute.
LinearHashTable
boolean addSlow(T x) {
if (2*(q+1) > t.length) resize(); // max 50% occupancy
int i = hash(x);
while (t[i] != null) {
if (t[i] != del && x.equals(t[i])) return false;
i = (i == t.length-1) ? 0 : i + 1; // increment i (mod t.length)
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5. Hash Tables 5.4. Discussion and Exercises
}
t[i] = x;
n++; q++;
return true;
}
Exercise 5.6. Early versions of the Java hashCode() method for the String class worked by
not using all characters of long strings. For example, for a 16 character string, the hash
code was computed using only the 8 even-indexed characters. Explain why this was a very
bad idea by Giving an example of large set of strings that all have the same hash code.
Exercise 5.7. Suppose you have an object made up of two w-bit integers, x and y. Show
why x ⊕ y does not make a good hash code for your object. Give an example of a large set
of objects that would all have hash code 0.
Exercise 5.8. Suppose you have an object made up of two w-bit integers, x and y. Show
why x + y does not make a good hash code for your object. Give an example of a large set
of objects that would all have the same hash code.
Exercise 5.9. Suppose you have an object made up of two w-bit integers, x and y. Suppose
that the hash code for your object is defined by some deterministic function h(x, y) that
produces a single w-bit integer. Prove that there exists a large set of objects that have the
same hash code.
Exercise 5.10. Let p = 2w −1 for some positive integer w. Explain why, for a positive integer
x
(x mod 2w ) + (x div 2w ) ≡ x mod (2w − 1) .
(This gives an algorithm for computing x mod (2w − 1) by repeatedly setting
x = x&((1<<w) − 1) + x>>>w
until x ≤ 2w − 1.)
Exercise 5.11. Find some commonly-used hash table implementation (The Java Collection
Framework HashMap or the HashTable or LinearHashTable implementations in this book,
for example) and design a program that stores integers in this data structure so that there
are integers, x, such that find(x) takes linear time. That is, find a set of n integers for
which there are cn elements that hash to the same table location.
Depending on how good the implementation is, you may be able to do this just by
inspecting the code for the implementation, or you may have to write some code that does
116
5. Hash Tables 5.4. Discussion and Exercises
trial insertions and searches, timing how long it takes to add and find particular values.
(This can be, and has been, used to launch denial of service attacks on web servers [17].)
117
5. Hash Tables 5.4. Discussion and Exercises
118
Chapter 6
Binary Trees
This chapter introduces one of the most fundamental structures in computer science: bi-
nary trees. The use of the word tree here comes from the fact that, when we draw them, the
resulting drawing often resembles the trees we find in a forest. There are lots of ways of
defining binary trees. Mathematically, a binary tree is a connected undirected finite graph
with no cycles, and no vertex of degree greater than three.
For most computer science applications, binary trees are rooted: A special node,
r, of degree at most two is called the root of the tree. For every node, u , r, the second
node on the path from u to r is called the parent of u. Each of the other nodes adjacent
to u is called a child of u. Most of the binary trees we are interested in are ordered, so we
distinguish between the left child and right child of u.
In illustrations, binary trees are usually drawn from the root downward, with the
root at the top of the drawing and the left and right children respectively given by left and
right positions in the drawing (Figure 6.1). A binary tree with nine nodes is drawn this
way in Figure 6.2.a.
u.parent
u
u.left u.right
Figure 6.1: The parent, left child, and right child of the node u in a BinaryTree.
119
6. Binary Trees 6.1. BinaryTree: A Basic Binary Tree
r r
(a) (b)
Figure 6.2: A binary tree with (a) nine real nodes and (b) ten external nodes.
Binary trees are so important that a terminology has developed around them: The
depth of a node, u, in a binary tree is the length of the path from u to the root of the tree.
If a node, w, is on the path from u to r then w is called an ancestor of u and u a descendant
of w. The subtree of a node, u, is the binary tree that is rooted at u and contains all of u’s
descendants. The height of a node, u, is the length of the longest path from u to one of its
descendants. The height of a tree is the height of its root. A node, u, is a leaf if it has no
children.
We sometimes think of the tree as being augmented with external nodes. Any node
that does not have a left child has an external node as its left child and any node that does
not have a right child has an external node as its right child (see Figure 6.2.b). It is easy to
verify, by induction, that a binary tree having n ≥ 1 real nodes has n + 1 external nodes.
6.1 BinaryTree: A Basic Binary Tree
The simplest way to represent a node, u, in a binary tree is to store the (at most three)
neighbours of u explicitly:
BinaryTree
class BTNode<Node extends BTNode<Node>> {
Node left;
Node right;
Node parent;
}
When one of these three neighbours is not present, we set it to nil. In this way, external
nodes in the tree as well as the parent of the root correspond to the value nil.
The binary tree itself can then be represented by a reference to its root node, r:
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6. Binary Trees 6.1. BinaryTree: A Basic Binary Tree
BinaryTree
Node r;
We can compute the depth of a node, u, in a binary tree by counting the number of
steps on the path from u to the root:
BinaryTree
int depth(Node u) {
int d = 0;
while (u != r) {
u = u.parent;
d++;
}
return d;
}
6.1.1 Recursive Algorithms
It is very easy to compute facts about binary trees using recursive algorithms. For example,
to compute the size of (number of nodes in) a binary tree rooted at node u, we recursively
compute the sizes of the two subtrees rooted at the children of u, sum these sizes, and add
one:
BinaryTree
int size(Node u) {
if (u == nil) return 0;
return 1 + size(u.left) + size(u.right);
}
To compute the height of a node u we can compute the height of u’s two subtrees,
take the maximum, and add one:
BinaryTree
int height(Node u) {
if (u == nil) return -1;
return 1 + Math.max(height(u.left), height(u.right));
}
6.1.2 Traversing Binary Trees
The two algorithms from the previous section use recursion to visit all the nodes in a
binary tree. Each of them visits the nodes of the binary tree in the same order as the
following code:
121
6. Binary Trees 6.1. BinaryTree: A Basic Binary Tree
BinaryTree
void traverse(Node u) {
if (u == nil) return;
traverse(u.left);
traverse(u.right);
}
Using recursion this way produces very short, simple code, but can be problematic.
The maximum depth of the recursion is given by the maximum depth of a node in the
binary tree, i.e., the tree’s height. If the height of the tree is very large, then this could very
well use more stack space than is available, causing a crash.
Luckily, traversing a binary tree can be done without recursion. This is done using
an algorithm that uses where it came from to decide where it will go next. See Figure 6.3.
If we arrive at a node u from u.parent, then the next thing to do is to visit u.left. If we
arrive at u from u.left, then the next thing to do is to visit u.right. If we arrive at u from
u.right, then we are done visiting u’s subtree, so we return to u.parent. The following
code implements this idea, with code included for handling the cases where any of u.left,
u.right, or u.parent is nil:
BinaryTree
void traverse2() {
Node u = r, prev = nil, next;
while (u != nil) {
if (prev == u.parent) {
if (u.left != nil) next = u.left;
else if (u.right != nil) next = u.right;
else next = u.parent;
} else if (prev == u.left) {
if (u.right != nil) next = u.right;
else next = u.parent;
} else {
next = u.parent;
}
prev = u;
u = next;
}
}
The same things that can be computed with recursive algorithms can also be done
this way. For example, to compute the size of the tree we keep a counter, n, and increment
n whenever visiting a node for the first time:
122
6. Binary Trees 6.1. BinaryTree: A Basic Binary Tree
r
u.parent
u
u.left u.right
Figure 6.3: The three cases that occur at node u when traversing a binary tree non-
recursively, and the resulting traversal of the tree.
BinaryTree
int size2() {
Node u = r, prev = nil, next;
int n = 0;
while (u != nil) {
if (prev == u.parent) {
n++;
if (u.left != nil) next = u.left;
else if (u.right != nil) next = u.right;
else next = u.parent;
} else if (prev == u.left) {
if (u.right != nil) next = u.right;
else next = u.parent;
} else {
next = u.parent;
}
prev = u;
u = next;
}
return n;
}
In some implementations of binary trees, the parent field is not used. When this is
the case, a non-recursive implementation is still possible, but the implementation has to
use a List (or Stack) to keep track of the path from the current node to the root.
A special kind of traversal that does not fit the pattern of the above functions is
the breadth-first traversal. In a breadth-first traversal, the nodes are visited level-by-level
starting at the root and working our way down, visiting the nodes at each level from left
123
6. Binary Trees 6.2. BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
r
Figure 6.4: During a breadth-first traversal, the nodes of a binary tree are visited level-by-
level, and left-to-right within each level.
to right. This is similar to the way we would read a page of English text. (See Figure 6.4.)
This is implemented using a queue, q, that initially contains only the root, r. At each step,
we extract the next node, u, from q, process u and add u.left and u.right (if they are
non-nil) to q:
BinaryTree
void bfTraverse() {
Queue<Node> q = new LinkedList<Node>();
if (r != nil) q.add(r);
while (!q.isEmpty()) {
Node u = q.remove();
if (u.left != nil) q.add(u.left);
if (u.right != nil) q.add(u.right);
}
}
6.2 BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
A BinarySearchTree is a special kind of binary tree in which each node, u, also stores a
data value, u.x, from some total order. The data values in a binary search tree obey the
binary search tree property: For a node, u, every data value stored in the subtree rooted
at u.left is less than u.x and every data value stored in the subtree rooted at u.right is
greater than u.x. An example of a BinarySearchTree is shown in Figure 6.5.
6.2.1 Searching
The binary search tree property is extremely useful because it allows us to quickly locate
a value, x, in a binary search tree. To do this we start searching for x at the root, r. When
examining a node, u, there are three cases:
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6. Binary Trees 6.2. BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
7
3 11
1 5 9 13
4 6 8 12 14
Figure 6.5: A binary search tree.
1. If x < u.x then the search proceeds to u.left;
2. If x > u.x then the search proceeds to u.right;
3. If x = u.x then we have found the node u containing x.
The search terminates when Case 3 occurs or when u = nil. In the former case, we found
x. In the latter case, we conclude that x is not in the binary search tree.
BinarySearchTree
T findEQ(T x) {
Node u = r;
while (u != nil) {
int comp = compare(x, u.x);
if (comp < 0)
u = u.left;
else if (comp > 0)
u = u.right;
else
return u.x;
}
return null;
}
Two examples of searches in a binary search tree are shown in Figure 6.6. As the
second example shows, even if we don’t find x in the tree, we still gain some valuable
information. If we look at the last node, u, at which Case 1 occurred, we see that u.x is the
smallest value in the tree that is greater than x. Similarly, the last node at which Case 2
occurred contains the largest value in the tree that is less than x. Therefore, by keeping
125
6. Binary Trees 6.2. BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
7 7
3 11 3 11
1 5 9 13 1 5 9 13
4 6 8 12 14 4 6 8 12 14
(a) (b)
Figure 6.6: An example of (a) a successful search (for 6) and (b) an unsuccessful search
(for 10) in a binary search tree.
track of the last node, z, at which Case 1 occurs, a BinarySearchTree can implement the
find(x) operation that returns the smallest value stored in the tree that is greater than or
equal to x:
BinarySearchTree
T find(T x) {
Node w = r, z = nil;
while (w != nil) {
int comp = compare(x, w.x);
if (comp < 0) {
z = w;
w = w.left;
} else if (comp > 0) {
w = w.right;
} else {
return w.x;
}
}
return z == nil ? null : z.x;
}
6.2.2 Addition
To add a new value, x, to a BinarySearchTree, we first search for x. If we find it, then there
is no need to insert it. Otherwise, we store x at a leaf child of the last node, p, encountered
during the search for x. Whether the new node is the left or right child of p depends on
the result of comparing x and p.x.
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6. Binary Trees 6.2. BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
BinarySearchTree
boolean add(T x) {
Node p = findLast(x);
return addChild(p, newNode(x));
}
BinarySearchTree
Node findLast(T x) {
Node w = r, prev = nil;
while (w != nil) {
prev = w;
int comp = compare(x, w.x);
if (comp < 0) {
w = w.left;
} else if (comp > 0) {
w = w.right;
} else {
return w;
}
}
return prev;
}
BinarySearchTree
boolean addChild(Node p, Node u) {
if (p == nil) {
r = u; // inserting into empty tree
} else {
int comp = compare(u.x, p.x);
if (comp < 0) {
p.left = u;
} else if (comp > 0) {
p.right = u;
} else {
return false; // u.x is already in the tree
}
u.parent = p;
}
n++;
return true;
}
An example is shown in Figure 6.7. The most time-consuming part of this process is the
initial search for x, which takes time proportional to the height of the newly added node
u. In the worst case, this is equal to the height of the BinarySearchTree.
127
6. Binary Trees 6.2. BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
7 7
3 11 3 11
1 5 9 13 1 5 9 13
4 6 8 12 14 4 6 8 12 14
8.5
Figure 6.7: Inserting the value 8.5 into a binary search tree.
6.2.3 Removal
Deleting a value stored in a node, u, of a BinarySearchTree is a little more difficult. If u is
a leaf, then we can just detach u from its parent. Even better: If u has only one child, then
we can splice u from the tree by having u.parent adopt u’s child (see Figure 6.8):
BinarySearchTree
void splice(Node u) {
Node s, p;
if (u.left != nil) {
s = u.left;
} else {
s = u.right;
}
if (u == r) {
r = s;
p = nil;
} else {
p = u.parent;
if (p.left == u) {
p.left = s;
} else {
p.right = s;
}
}
if (s != nil) {
s.parent = p;
}
n--;
}
128
6. Binary Trees 6.2. BinarySearchTree: An Unbalanced Binary Search Tree
7
3 11
1 5 9 13
4 6 8 12 14
Figure 6.8: Removing a leaf (6) or a node with only one child (9) is easy.
7 7
3 11 3 12
1 5 9 13 1 5 9 13
4 6 8 12 14 4 6 8 14
Figure 6.9: Deleting a value (11) from a node, u, with two children is done by replacing u’s
value with the smallest value in the right subtree of u.
Things get tricky, though, when u has two children. In this case, the simplest thing
to do is to find a node, w, that has less than two children such that we can replace u.x with
w.x. To maintain the binary search tree property, the value w.x should be close to the value
of u.x. For example, picking w such that w.x is the smallest value greater than u.x will do.
Finding the node w is easy; it is the smallest value in the subtree rooted at u.right. This
node can be easily removed because it has no left child. (See Figure 6.9)
BinarySearchTree
void remove(Node u) {
if (u.left == nil || u.right == nil) {
splice(u);
} else {
Node w = u.right;
while (w.left != nil)
w = w.left;
u.x = w.x;
splice(w);
}
}
129
6. Binary Trees 6.3. Discussion and Exercises
6.2.4 Summary
The find(x), add(x), and remove(x) operations in a BinarySearchTree each involve follow-
ing a path from the root of the tree to some node in the tree. Without knowing more about
the shape of the tree it is difficult to say much about the length of this path, except that
it is less than n, the number of nodes in the tree. The following (unimpressive) theorem
summarizes the performance of the BinarySearchTree data structure:
Theorem 6.1. A BinarySearchTree implements the SSet interface. A BinarySearchTree
supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(n) time per operation.
Theorem 6.1 compares poorly with Theorem 4.1, which shows that the SkiplistS-
Set structure can implement the SSet interface with O(log n) expected time per operation.
The problem with the BinarySearchTree structure is that it can become unbalanced. In-
stead of looking like the tree in Figure 6.5 it can look like a long chain of n nodes, all but
the last having exactly one child.
There are a number of ways of avoiding unbalanced binary search trees, all of
which lead to data structures that have O(log n) time operations. In Chapter 7 we show
how O(log n) expected time operations can be achieved with randomization. In Chapter 8
we show how O(log n) amortized time operations can be achieved with partial rebuilding
operations. In Chapter 9 we show how O(log n) worst-case time operations can be achieved
by simulating a tree that is not binary: a tree in which nodes can have up to four children.
6.3 Discussion and Exercises
Binary trees have been used to model relationships for literally thousands of years. One
reason for this is that binary trees naturally model (pedigree) family trees. These are the
family trees in which the root is a person, the left and right children are the person’s
parents, and so on, recursively. In more recent centuries binary trees have also been used
to model species-trees in biology, where the leaves of the tree represent extant species and
the internal nodes of the tree represent speciation events in which two populations of a
single species evolve into two separate species.
Binary search trees appear to have been discovered independently by several groups
in the 1950s [48, Section 6.2.2]. Further references to specific kinds of binary search trees
are provided in subsequent chapters.
When implementing a binary tree from scratch, there are several design decisions
to be made. One of these is the question of whether or not each node stores a pointer to
130
6. Binary Trees 6.3. Discussion and Exercises
its parent. If most of the operations simply follow a root-to-leaf path, then parent pointers
are unnecessary, and are a potential source of coding errors. On the other hand, the lack of
parent pointers means that tree traversals must be done recursively or with the use of an
explicit stack. Some other methods (like inserting or deleting into some kinds of balanced
binary search trees) are also complicated by the lack of parent pointers.
Another design decision is concerned with how to store the parent, left child, and
right child pointers at a node. In the implementation given here, they are stored as sep-
arate variables. Another option is to store them in an array, p, of length 3, so that u.p[0]
is the left child of u, u.p[1] is the right child of u, and u.p[2] is the parent of u. Using an
array this way means that some sequences of if statements can be simplified into algebraic
expressions.
An example of such a simplification occurs during tree traversal. If a traversal
arrives at a node u from u.p[i], then the next node in the traversal is u.p[(i + 1) mod 3].
Similar examples occur when there is left-right symmetry. For example, the sibling of
u.p[i] is u.p[(i + 1) mod 2]. This works whether u.p[i] is a left child (i = 0) or a right child
(i = 1) of u. In some cases this means that some complicated code that would otherwise
need to have both a left version and right version can be written only once. See the methods
rotateLeft(u) and rotateRight(u) on page 143 for an example.
Exercise 6.1. Prove that a binary tree having n ≥ 1 nodes has n − 1 edges.
Exercise 6.2. Prove that a binary tree having n ≥ 1 real nodes has n + 1 external nodes.
Exercise 6.3. Prove that, if a binary tree, T , has at least one leaf, then either (a) T ’s root
has at most one child or (b) T has more than one leaf.
Exercise 6.4. Write a non-recursive variant of the size2() method, size(u), that computes
the size of the subtree rooted at node u.
Exercise 6.5. Write a non-recursive method, height2(u), that computes the height of node
u in a BinaryTree.
Exercise 6.6. A binary tree is balanced if, for every node u, the size of the subtrees rooted
at u.left and u.right differ by at most one. Write a recursive method, isBalanced(), that
tests if a binary tree is balanced. Your method should run in O(n) time. (Be sure to test
your code on some large trees with different shapes; it is easy to write a method that takes
much longer than O(n) time.)
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6. Binary Trees 6.3. Discussion and Exercises
0 11
1 6 4 10
2 3 7 9 0 3 6 9
4 5 8 10 11 1 2 5 7 8
5
1 8
0 3 7 10
2 4 6 9 11
Figure 6.10: Pre-order, post-order, and in-order numberings of a binary tree.
A pre-order traversal of a binary tree is a traversal that visits each node, u, before
any of its children. An in-order traversal visits u after visiting all the nodes in u’s left
subtree but before visiting any of the nodes in u’s right subtree. A post-order traversal
visits u only after visiting all other nodes in u’s subtree. The pre/in/post-order numbering
of a tree labels the nodes of a tree with the integers 0, . . . , n − 1 in the order that they are
encountered by a pre/in/post-order traversal. See Figure 6.10 for an example.
Exercise 6.7. Create a subclass of BinaryTree whose nodes have fields for storing pre-
order, post-order, and in-order numbers. Write recursive methods preOrderNumber(),
inOrderNumber(), and postOrderNumbers() that assign these numbers correctly. These
methods should each run in O(n) time.
Exercise 6.8. Write non-recursive functions nextPreOrder(u), nextInOrder(u), and nextPostOrder(u)
that return the node that follows u in a pre-order, in-order, or post-order traversal, respec-
tively. These functions should take amortized constant time; if we start at any node u and
repeatedly call one of these functions and assign the return value to u until u = null, then
the cost of all these calls should be O(n).
Exercise 6.9. Suppose we are given a binary tree with pre- post- and in-order numbers as-
signed to the nodes. Show how these numbers can be used to answer each of the following
questions in constant time:
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6. Binary Trees 6.3. Discussion and Exercises
1. Given a node u, determine the size of the subtree rooted at u.
2. Given a node u, determine the depth of u.
3. Given two nodes u and w, determine if u is an ancestor of w
Exercise 6.10. Suppose you are given a list of nodes with pre-order and in-order num-
bers assigned. Prove that there is at most one possible tree with this pre-order/in-order
numbering and show how to construct it.
Exercise 6.11. Show that the shape of any binary tree on n nodes can be represented using
at most 2(n − 1) bits. (Hint: think about recording what happens during a traversal and
then playing back that recording to reconstruct the tree.)
Exercise 6.12. Illustrate what happens when we add the values 3.5 and then 4.5 to the
binary search tree in Figure 6.5.
Exercise 6.13. Illustrate what happens when we remove the values 3 and then 5 from the
binary search tree in Figure 6.5.
Exercise 6.14. Design and implement a method BinarySearchTree method getLE(x), that
returns a list of all items in the tree that are less than or equal to x. The running time of
your method should be O(n0 + h) where n0 is the number of items less than or equal to x
and h is the height of the tree.
Exercise 6.15. Describe how to add the elements {1, . . . , n} to an initially empty Binary-
SearchTree in such a way that the resulting tree has height n − 1. How many ways are
there to do this?
Exercise 6.16. If we have some BinarySearchTree and perform the operations add(x) fol-
lowed by remove(x) (with the same value of x) do we necessarily return to the original
tree?
Exercise 6.17. Can a remove(x) operation increase the height of any node in a Binary-
SearchTree? If so, by how much?
Exercise 6.18. Can an add(x) operation increase the height of any node in a BinarySearch-
Tree? Can it increase the height of the tree? If so, by how much?
Exercise 6.19. Design and implement a version of BinarySearchTree in which each node,
u, maintains values u.size (the size of the subtree rooted at u), u.depth (the depth of u),
and u.height (the height of the subtree rooted at u).
133
6. Binary Trees 6.3. Discussion and Exercises
These values should be maintained, even during the add(x) and remove(x) opera-
tions, but this should not increase the cost of these operations by more than a constant
factor.
134
Chapter 7
Random Binary Search Trees
In this chapter, we present a binary search tree structure that uses randomization to
achieve O(log n) expected time for all operations.
7.1 Random Binary Search Trees
Consider the two binary search trees shown in Figure 7.1. The one on the left is a list and
the other is a perfectly balanced binary search tree. The one on the left has height n−1 = 14
and the one on the right has height three.
Imagine how these two trees could have been constructed. The one on the left
occurs if we start with an empty BinarySearchTree and add the sequence
h0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14i .
No other sequence of additions will create this tree (as you can prove by induction on n).
On the other hand, the tree on the right can be created by the sequence
h7, 3, 11, 1, 5, 9, 13, 0, 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12, 14i .
Other sequences work as well, including
h7, 3, 1, 5, 0, 2, 4, 6, 11, 9, 13, 8, 10, 12, 14i ,
and
h7, 3, 1, 11, 5, 0, 2, 4, 6, 9, 13, 8, 10, 12, 14i .
In fact, there are 21, 964, 800 addition sequences that generate the tree on the right and
only one that generates the tree on the left.
The above example gives some anecdotal evidence that, if we choose a random
permutation of 0, . . . , 14, and add it into a binary search tree then we are more likely to get
135
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.1. Random Binary Search Trees
0
1
2 7
3 3 11
..
. 1 5 9 13
14 0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Figure 7.1: Two binary search trees containing the integers 0, . . . , 14.
a very balanced tree (the right side of Figure 7.1) than we are to get a very unbalanced tree
(the left side of Figure 7.1).
We can formalize this notion by studying random binary search trees. A random
binary search tree of size n is obtained in the following way: Take a random permutation,
x0 , . . . , xn−1 , of the integers 0, . . . , n − 1 and add its elements, one by one, into a Binary-
SearchTree. By random permutation we mean that each of the possible n! permutations
(orderings) of 0, . . . , n − 1 is equally likely, so that the probability of obtaining any particu-
lar permutation is 1/n!.
Note that the values 0, . . . , n − 1 could be replaced by any ordered set of n elements
without changing any of the properties of the random binary search tree. The element
x ∈ {0, . . . , n − 1} is simply standing in for the element of rank x in an ordered set of size n.
Before we can present our main result about random binary search trees, we must
take some time for a short digression to discuss a type of number that comes up frequently
when studying randomized structures. For a non-negative integer, k, the k-th harmonic
number, denoted Hk , is defined as
Hk = 1 + 1/2 + 1/3 + · · · + 1/k .
The harmonic number Hk has no simple closed form, but it is very closely related to the
natural logarithm of k. In particular,
ln k < Hk ≤ ln k + 1 .
Rk
Readers who have studied calculus might notice that this is because the integral 1
(1/x) dx =
ln k. Keeping in mind that an integral can be interpreted as the area between a curve and
136
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.1. Random Binary Search Trees
1 1
f (x) = 1/x
1/2 1/2
1/3 1/3
.. ..
. .
1/k 1/k
0 1 2 3 ... k 1 2 3 ... k
P Rk
Figure 7.2: The kth harmonic number Hk = ki=1 1/i is upper-bounded by 1 + 1 (1/x) dx
Rk Rk
and lower-bounded by 1 (1/x) dx. The value of 1 (1/x) dx is given by the area of the shaded
region, while the value of Hk is given by the area of the rectangles.
Rk
the x-axis, the value of Hk can be lower-bounded by the integral 1 (1/x) dx and upper-
Rk
bounded by 1 + 1 (1/x) dx. (See Figure 7.2 for a graphical explanation.)
Lemma 7.1. In a random binary search tree of size n, the following statements hold:
1. For any x ∈ {0, . . . , n−1}, the expected length of the search path for x is Hx+1 +Hn−x −O(1).1
2. For any x ∈ (−1, n)\{0, . . . , n−1}, the expected length of the search path for x is Hdxe +Hn−dxe .
We will prove Lemma 7.1 in the next section. For now, consider what the two parts
of Lemma 7.1 tell us. The first part tells us that if we search for an element in a tree of size
n, then the expected length of the search path is at most 2 ln n + O(1). The second part tells
us the same thing about searching for a value not stored in the tree. When we compare the
two parts of the lemma, we see that it is only slightly faster to search for something that is
in the tree compared to something that is not in the tree.
7.1.1 Proof of Lemma 7.1
The key observation needed to prove Lemma 7.1 is the following: The search path for a
value x in the open interval (−1, n) in a random binary search tree, T , contains the node
with key i < x if and only if, in the random permutation used to create T , i appears before
any of {i + 1, i + 2, . . . , bxc}.
1 The expressions x + 1 and n − x can be interpreted respectively as the number of elements in the tree less
than or equal to x and the number of elements in the tree greater than or equal to x.
137
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.1. Random Binary Search Trees
j
. . . , i, . . . , j − 1 j + 1, . . . , bxc, . . .
Figure 7.3: The value i < x is on the search path for x if and only if i is the first element
among {i, i + 1, . . . , bxc} added to the tree.
To see this, refer to Figure 7.3 and notice that, until some value in {i, i + 1, . . . , bxc}
is added, the search paths for each value in the open interval (i − 1, bxc + 1) are identical.
(Remember that for two search values to have different search paths, there must be some
element in the tree that compares differently with them.) Let j be the first element in
{i, i + 1, . . . , bxc} to appear in the random permutation. Notice that j is now and will always
be on the search path for x. If j , i then the node uj containing j is created before the node
ui that contains i. Later, when i is added, it will be added to the subtree rooted at uj .left,
since i < j. On the other hand, the search path for x will never visit this subtree because it
will proceed to uj .right after visiting uj .
Similarly, for i > x, i appears in the search path for x if and only if i appears before
any of {dxe, dxe + 1, . . . , i − 1} in the random permutation used to create T .
Notice that, if we start with a random permutation of {0, . . . , n}, then the subse-
quences containing only {i, i + 1, . . . , bxc} and {dxe, dxe + 1, . . . , i − 1} are also random permu-
tations of their respective elements. Each element, then, in the subsets {i, i + 1, . . . , bxc} and
{dxe, dxe + 1, . . . , i − 1} is equally likely to appear before any other in its subset in the random
permutation used to create T . So we have
1/(bxc − i + 1) if i < x
Pr{i is on the search path for x} =
.
1/(i − dxe + 1) if i > x
138
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
With this observation, the proof of Lemma 7.1 involves some simple calculations
with harmonic numbers:
Proof of Lemma 7.1. Let Ii be the indicator random variable that is equal to one when i
appears on the search path for x and zero otherwise. Then the length of the search path is
given by
X
Ii
i∈{0,...,n−1}\{x}
so, if x ∈ {0, . . . , n − 1}, the expected length of the search path is given by (see Figure 7.4.a)
x−1 n−1
x−1 n−1
X X X X
E Ii + Ii = E [Ii ] + E [Ii ]
i=0 i=x+1 i=0 i=x+1
x−1
X n−1
X
= 1/(bxc − i + 1) + 1/(i − dxe + 1)
i=0 i=x+1
x−1
X n−1
X
= 1/(x − i + 1) + 1/(i − x + 1)
i=0 i=x+1
1 1 1
= + + ··· +
2 3 x+1
1 1 1
+ + + ··· +
2 3 n−x
= Hx+1 + Hn−x − 2 .
The corresponding calculations for a search value x ∈ (−1, n) \ {0, . . . , n − 1} are almost iden-
tical (see Figure 7.4.b).
7.1.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of a random binary search tree:
Theorem 7.1. A random binary search tree can be constructed in O(n log n) time. In a random
binary search tree, the find(x) operation takes O(log n) expected time.
We should emphasize again that the expectation in Theorem 7.1 is with respect to
the random permutation used to create the random binary search tree. In particular, it
does not depend on a random choice of x; it is true for every value of x.
7.2 Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
The problem with random binary search trees is, of course, that they are not dynamic.
They don’t support the add(x) or remove(x) operations needed to implement the SSet in-
139
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Pr{Ii = 1} x+1 x ··· 3 2 2 3 ··· n−x
i 0 1 ··· x−1 x x+1 ··· n−1
(a)
1 1 1 1 1 1 1
Pr{Ii = 1} bxc+1 bxc ··· 3 2 1 1 2 3 ··· n−bxc
i 0 1 ··· bxc dxe ··· n−1
(b)
Figure 7.4: The probabilities of an element being on the search path for x when (a) x is an
integer and (b) when x is not an integer.
terface. In this section we describe a data structure called a Treap that uses Lemma 7.1 to
implement the SSet interface.2
A node in a Treap is like a node in a BinarySearchTree in that it has a data value,
x, but it also contains a unique numerical priority, p, that is assigned at random:
Treap
class Node<T> extends BinarySearchTree.BSTNode<Node<T>,T> {
int p;
}
In addition to being a binary search tree, the nodes in a Treap also obey the heap property:
• (Heap Property) At every node u, except the root, u.parent.p < u.p.
In other words, each node has a priority smaller than that of its two children. An example
is shown in Figure 7.5.
The heap and binary search tree conditions together ensure that, once the key (x)
and priority (p) for each node are defined, the shape of the Treap is completely determined.
The heap property tells us that the node with minimum priority has to be the root, r, of
the Treap. The binary search tree property tells us that all nodes with keys smaller than
r.x are stored in the subtree rooted at r.left and all nodes with keys larger than r.x are
stored in the subtree rooted at r.right.
2 The names Treap comes from the fact that this data structure is simultaneously a binary search tree
(Section 6.2) and a heap (Chapter 10).
140
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 2, 99 4, 14 9, 17
7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
Figure 7.5: An example of a Treap containing the integers 0, . . . , 9. Each node, u, is illus-
trated as a box containing u.x, u.p.
The important point about the priority values in a Treap is that they are unique
and assigned at random. Because of this, there are two equivalent ways we can think
about a Treap. As defined above, a Treap obeys the heap and binary search tree properties.
Alternatively, we can think of a Treap as a BinarySearchTree whose nodes were added
in increasing order of priority. For example, the Treap in Figure 7.5 can be obtained by
adding the sequence of (x, p) values
h(3, 1), (1, 6), (0, 9), (5, 11), (4, 14), (9, 17), (7, 22), (6, 42), (8, 49), (2, 99)i
into a BinarySearchTree.
Since the priorities are chosen randomly, this is equivalent to taking a random
permutation of the keys — in this case the permutation is
h3, 1, 0, 5, 9, 4, 7, 6, 8, 2i
— and adding these to a BinarySearchTree. But this means that the shape of a treap is
identical to that of a random binary search tree. In particular, if we replace each key x by
its rank,3 then Lemma 7.1 applies. Restating Lemma 7.1 in terms of Treaps, we have:
Lemma 7.2. In a Treap that stores a set S of n keys, the following statements hold:
1. For any x ∈ S, the expected length of the search path for x is Hr(x)+1 + Hn−r(x) − O(1).
2. For any x < S, the expected length of the search path for x is Hr(x) + Hn−r(x) .
3 The rank of an element x in a set S of elements is the number of elements in S that are less than x.
141
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
u w
w u
rotateRight(u) ⇒
C ⇐ rotateLeft(w) A
A B B C
Figure 7.6: Left and right rotations in a binary search tree.
Here, r(x) denotes the rank of x in the set S ∪ {x}.
Again, we emphasize that the expectation in Lemma 7.2 is taken over the random
choices of the priorities for each node. It does not require any assumptions about the
randomness in the keys.
Lemma 7.2 tells us that Treaps can implement the find(x) operation efficiently.
However, the real benefit of a Treap is that it can support the add(x) and delete(x) oper-
ations. To do this, it needs to perform rotations in order to maintain the heap property.
Refer to Figure 7.6. A rotation in a binary search tree is a local modification that takes a
parent u of a node w and makes w the parent of u, while preserving the binary search tree
property. Rotations come in two flavours: left or right depending on whether w is a right or
left child of u, respectively.
The code that implements this has to handle these two possibilities and be careful
of a boundary case (when u is the root) so the actual code is a little longer than Figure 7.6
would lead a reader to believe:
BinarySearchTree
void rotateLeft(Node u) {
Node w = u.right;
w.parent = u.parent;
if (w.parent != nil) {
if (w.parent.left == u) {
w.parent.left = w;
} else {
w.parent.right = w;
}
}
u.right = w.left;
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7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
if (u.right != nil) {
u.right.parent = u;
}
u.parent = w;
w.left = u;
if (u == r) { r = w; r.parent = nil; }
}
void rotateRight(Node u) {
Node w = u.left;
w.parent = u.parent;
if (w.parent != nil) {
if (w.parent.left == u) {
w.parent.left = w;
} else {
w.parent.right = w;
}
}
u.left = w.right;
if (u.left != nil) {
u.left.parent = u;
}
u.parent = w;
w.right = u;
if (u == r) { r = w; r.parent = nil; }
}
In terms of the Treap data structure, the most important property of a rotation is that the
depth of w decreases by one while the depth of u increases by one.
Using rotations, we can implement the add(x) operation as follows: We create a
new node, u, and assign u.x = x and pick a random value for u.p. Next we add u using the
usual add(x) algorithm for a BinarySearchTree, so that u is now a leaf of the Treap. At
this point, our Treap satisfies the binary search tree property, but not necessarily the heap
property. In particular, it may be the case that u.parent.p > u.p. If this is the case, then we
perform a rotation at node w=u.parent so that u becomes the parent of w. If u continues
to violate the heap property, we will have to repeat this, decreasing u’s depth by one every
time, until u either becomes the root or u.parent.p < u.p.
Treap
boolean add(T x) {
Node<T> u = newNode();
u.x = x;
u.p = rand.nextInt();
if (super.add(u)) {
143
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
bubbleUp(u);
return true;
}
return false;
}
void bubbleUp(Node<T> u) {
while (u.parent != nil && u.parent.p > u.p) {
if (u.parent.right == u) {
rotateLeft(u.parent);
} else {
rotateRight(u.parent);
}
}
if (u.parent == nil) {
r = u;
}
}
An example of an add(x) operation is shown in Figure 7.7.
The running time of the add(x) operation is given by the time it takes to follow
the search path for x plus the number of rotations performed to move the newly-added
node, u, up to its correct location in the Treap. By Lemma 7.2, the expected length of the
search path is at most 2 ln n + O(1). Furthermore, each rotation decreases the depth of u.
This stops if u becomes the root, so the expected number of rotations cannot exceed the
expected length of the search path. Therefore, the expected running time of the add(x)
operation in a Treap is O(log n). (Exercise 7.5 asks you to show that the expected number
of rotations performed during an addition is actually only O(1).)
The remove(x) operation in a Treap is the opposite of the add(x) operation. We
search for the node, u, containing x and then perform rotations to move u downwards until
it becomes a leaf and then we splice u from the Treap. Notice that, to move u downwards,
we can perform either a left or right rotation at u, which will replace u with u.right or
u.left, respectively. The choice is made by the first of the following that apply:
1. If u.left and u.right are both null, then u is a leaf and no rotation is performed.
2. If u.left (or u.right) is null, then perform a right (or left, respectively) rotation at
u.
3. If u.left.p < u.right.p (or u.left.p > u.right.p), then perform a right rotation (or
left rotation, respectively) at u.
144
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 2, 99 4, 14 9, 14
1.5, 4 7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 1.5, 4 4, 14 9, 14
2, 99 7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
3, 1
1.5, 4 5, 11
1, 6 2, 99 4, 14 9, 14
0, 9 7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
Figure 7.7: Adding the value 1.5 into the Treap from Figure 7.5.
145
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
These three rules ensure that the Treap doesn’t become disconnected and that the heap
property is restored once u is removed.
Treap
boolean remove(T x) {
Node<T> u = findLast(x);
if (u != nil && compare(u.x, x) == 0) {
trickleDown(u);
splice(u);
return true;
}
return false;
}
void trickleDown(Node<T> u) {
while (u.left != nil || u.right != nil) {
if (u.left == nil) {
rotateLeft(u);
} else if (u.right == nil) {
rotateRight(u);
} else if (u.left.p < u.right.p) {
rotateRight(u);
} else {
rotateLeft(u);
}
if (r == u) {
r = u.parent;
}
}
}
An example of the remove(x) operation is shown in Figure 7.8.
The trick to analyze the running time of the remove(x) operation is to notice that
this operation is the reverse of the add(x) operation. In particular, if we were to reinsert x,
using the same priority u.p, then the add(x) operation would do exactly the same number
of rotations and would restore the Treap to exactly the same state it was in before the
remove(x) operation took place. (Reading from bottom-to-top, Figure 7.8 illustrates the
addition of the value 9 into a Treap.) This means that the expected running time of the
remove(x) on a Treap of size n is proportional to the expected running time of the add(x)
operation on a Treap of size n−1. We conclude that the expected running time of remove(x)
is O(log n).
146
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.2. Treap: A Randomized Binary Search Tree
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 2, 99 4, 14 9, 17
7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 2, 99 4, 14 7, 22
6, 42 9, 17
8, 49
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 2, 99 4, 14 7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
9, 17
3, 1
1, 6 5, 11
0, 9 2, 99 4, 14 7, 22
6, 42 8, 49
Figure 7.8: Removing the value 9 from the Treap in Figure 7.5.
147
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.3. Discussion and Exercises
7.2.1 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the Treap data structure:
Theorem 7.2. A Treap implements the SSet interface. A Treap supports the operations add(x),
remove(x), and find(x) in O(log n) expected time per operation.
It is worth comparing the Treap data structure to the SkiplistSSet data structure.
Both implement the SSet operations in O(log n) expected time per operation. In both data
structures, add(x) and remove(x) involve a search and then a constant number of pointer
changes (see Exercise 7.5 below). Thus, for both these structures, the expected length of
the search path is the critical value in assessing their performance. In a SkiplistSSet, the
expected length of a search path is
2 log n + O(1) ,
In a Treap, the expected length of a search path is
2 ln n + O(1) ≈ 1.386 log n + O(1) .
Thus, the search paths in a Treap are considerably shorter and this translates into notice-
ably faster operations on Treaps than Skiplists. Exercise 4.7 in Chapter 4 shows how the
expected length of the search path in a Skiplist can be reduced to
e ln n + O(1) ≈ 1.884 log n + O(1)
by using biased coin tosses. Even with this optimization, the expected length of search
paths in a SkiplistSSet is noticeably longer than in a Treap.
7.3 Discussion and Exercises
Random binary search trees have been studied extensively. Devroye [19] gives a proof of
Lemma 7.1 and related results. There are much stronger results in the literature as well.
The most impressive of which is due to Reed [64], who shows that the expected height of
a random binary search tree is
α ln n − β ln ln n + O(1)
where α ≈ 4.31107 is the unique solution on [2, ∞) of the equation α ln((2e/α)) = 1 and
3
β= 2 ln(α/2)
. Furthermore, the variance of the height is constant.
148
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.3. Discussion and Exercises
The name Treap was coined by Aragon and Seidel [67] who discussed Treaps
and some of their variants. However, their basic structure was studied much earlier by
Vuillemin [74] who called them Cartesian trees.
One space-optimization of the Treap data structure that is sometimes performed is
the elimination of the explicit storage of the priority p in each node. Instead, the priority of
a node, u, is computed by hashing u’s address in memory (in 32-bit Java, this is equivalent
to hashing u.hashCode()). Although a number of hash functions will probably work well
for this in practice, for the important parts of the proof of Lemma 7.1 to remain valid, the
hash function should be randomized and have the min-wise independent property: For any
distinct values x1 , . . . , xk , each of the hash values h(x1 ), . . . , h(xk ) should be distinct with high
probability and, for each i ∈ {1, . . . , k},
Pr{h(xi ) = min{h(x1 ), . . . , h(xk )}} ≤ c/k
for some constant c. One such class of hash functions that is easy to implement and fairly
fast is tabulation hashing (Section 5.2.3).
Another Treap variant that doesn’t store priorities at each node is the randomized
binarysearch tree of Martı́nez and Roura [51]. In this variant, every node, u, stores the
size, u.size, of the subtree rooted at u. Both the add(x) and remove(x) algorithms are
randomized. The algorithm for adding x to the subtree rooted at u does the following:
1. With probability 1/(size(u) + 1), x is added the usual way, as a leaf, and rotations are
then done to bring x up to the root of this subtree.
2. Otherwise, x is recursively added into one of the two subtrees rooted at u.left or
u.right, as appropriate.
The first case corresponds to an add(x) operation in a Treap where x’s node receives a
random priority that is smaller than any of the size(u) priorities in u’s subtree, and this
case occurs with exactly the same probability.
Removing a value x from a randomized binary search tree is similar to the process
of removing from a Treap. We find the node, u, that contains x and then perform rotations
that repeatedly increase the depth of u until it becomes a leaf, at which point we can splice
it from the tree. The choice of whether to perform a left or right rotation at each step is
randomized.
1. With probability u.left.size/(u.size − 1), we perform a right rotation at u, making
u.left the root of the subtree that was formerly rooted at u.
149
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.3. Discussion and Exercises
2. With probability u.right.size/(u.size − 1), we perform a left rotation at u, making
u.right the root of the subtree that was formerly rooted at u.
Again, we can easily verify that these are exactly the same probabilities that the removal
algorithm in a Treap will perform a left or right rotation of u.
Randomized binary search trees have the disadvantage, compared to treaps, that
when adding and removing elements they make many random choices and they must
maintain the sizes of subtrees. One advantage of randomized binary search trees over
treaps is that subtree sizes can serve another useful purpose, namely to provide access by
rank in O(log n) expected time (see Exercise 7.10). In comparison, the random priorities
stored in treap nodes have no use other than keeping the treap balanced.
Exercise 7.1. Illustrate the addition of 4.5 (with priority 7) and then 7.5 (with priority 20)
on the Treap in Figure 7.5.
Exercise 7.2. Illustrate the removal of 5 and then 7 on the Treap in Figure 7.5.
Exercise 7.3. Prove the assertion that there are 21, 964, 800 sequences that generate the
tree on the right hand side of Figure 7.1. (Hint: Give a recursive formula for the number
of sequences that generate a complete binary tree of height h and evaluate this formula for
h = 3.)
Exercise 7.4. Design and implement the permute(a) method that takes as input an array,
a, containing n distinct values and randomly permutes a. The method should run in O(n)
time and you should prove that each of the n! possible permutations of a is equally proba-
ble.
Exercise 7.5. Use both parts of Lemma 7.2 to prove that the expected number of rotations
performed by an add(x) operation (and hence also a remove(x) operation) is O(1).
Exercise 7.6. Modify the Treap implementation given here so that it does not explicitly
store priorities. Instead, it should simulate them by hashing the hashCode() of each node.
Exercise 7.7. Suppose that a binary search tree stores, at each node, u, the height, u.height,
of the subtree rooted at u, and the size, u.size of the subtree rooted at u.
1. Show how, if we perform a left or right rotation at u, then these two quantities can
be updated, in constant time, for all nodes affected by the rotation.
2. Explain why the same result is not possible if we try to also store the depth, u.depth,
of each node u.
150
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.3. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 7.8. Design an implement an algorithm that constructs a Treap from a sorted ar-
ray, a, of n elements. This method should run in O(n) worst-case time and should construct
a Treap that is indistinguishable from one in which the elements of a were added one at a
time using the add(x) method.
Exercise 7.9. This exercise works out the details of how one can efficiently search a Treap
given a pointer that is close to the node we are searching for.
1. Design and implement a Treap implementation in which each node keeps track of
the minimum and maximum values in its subtree.
2. Using this extra information, add a fingerFind(x, u) method that executes the find(x)
operation with the help of a pointer to the node u (which is hopefully not far from
the node that contains x). This operation should start at u and walk upwards until
it reaches a node w such that w.min ≤ x ≤ w.max. From that point onwards, it should
perform a standard search for x starting from w. (One can show that fingerFind(x, u)
takes O(1 + log r) time, where r is the number of elements in the treap whose value is
between x and u.x.)
3. Extend your implementation into a version of a treap that starts all its find(x) oper-
ations from the node most recently found by find(x).
Exercise 7.10. Design and implement a version of a Treap that includes a get(i) operation
that returns the key with rank i in the Treap. (Hint: Have each node, u, keep track of the
size of the subtree rooted at u.)
Exercise 7.11. Implement a TreapList, an implementation of the List interface as a treap.
Each node in the treap should store a list item, and an in-order traversal of the treap finds
the items in the same order that they occur in the list. All the List operations get(i),
set(i, x), add(i, x) and remove(i) should run in O(log n) expected time.
Exercise 7.12. Design and implement a version of a Treap that supports the split(x)
operation. This operation removes all values from the Treap that are greater than x and
returns a second Treap that contains all the removed values.
Example: the code t2 = t.split(x) removes from t all values greater than x and returns a
new Treap t2 containing all these values. The split(x) operation should run in O(log n)
expected time.
Warning: For this modification to work properly and still allow the size() method to run
in constant time, it is necessary to implement the modifications in Exercise 7.10.
151
7. Random Binary Search Trees 7.3. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 7.13. Design and implement a version of a Treap that supports the absorb(t2)
operation, which can be thought of as the inverse of the split(x) operation. This opera-
tion removes all values from the Treap t2 and adds them to the receiver. This operation
presupposes that the smallest value in t2 is greater than the largest value in the receiver.
The absorb(t2) operation should run in O(log n) expected time.
Exercise 7.14. Implement Martinez’s randomized binary search trees, as discussed in this
section. Compare the performance of your implementation with that of the Treap imple-
mentation.
152
Chapter 8
Scapegoat Trees
In this chapter, we study a binary search tree data structure, the ScapegoatTree. This
structure is based on the common wisdom that, when something goes wrong, the first
thing we should do is find someone to blame it on (the scapegoat). Once blame is firmly
established, we can leave the scapegoat to fix the problem.
A ScapegoatTree keeps itself balanced by partial rebuilding operations. During a
partial rebuilding operation, an entire subtree is deconstructed and rebuilt into a perfectly
balanced subtree. There are many ways of rebuilding a subtree rooted at node u into
a perfectly balanced tree. One of the simplest is to traverse u’s subtree, gathering all its
nodes into an array a and then to recursively build a balanced subtree using a. If we let m =
a.length/2, then the element a[m] becomes the root of the new subtree, a[0], . . . , a[m − 1] get
stored recursively in the left subtree and a[m + 1], . . . , a[a.length − 1] get stored recursively
in the right subtree.
ScapegoatTree
void rebuild(Node<T> u) {
int ns = size(u);
Node<T> p = u.parent;
Node<T>[] a = (Node<T>[]) Array.newInstance(Node.class, ns);
packIntoArray(u, a, 0);
if (p == nil) {
r = buildBalanced(a, 0, ns);
r.parent = nil;
} else if (p.right == u) {
p.right = buildBalanced(a, 0, ns);
p.right.parent = p;
} else {
p.left = buildBalanced(a, 0, ns);
p.left.parent = p;
}
}
153
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.1. ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
int packIntoArray(Node<T> u, Node<T>[] a, int i) {
if (u == nil) {
return i;
}
i = packIntoArray(u.left, a, i);
a[i++] = u;
return packIntoArray(u.right, a, i);
}
Node<T> buildBalanced(Node<T>[] a, int i, int ns) {
if (ns == 0)
return nil;
int m = ns / 2;
a[i + m].left = buildBalanced(a, i, m);
if (a[i + m].left != nil)
a[i + m].left.parent = a[i + m];
a[i + m].right = buildBalanced(a, i + m + 1, ns - m - 1);
if (a[i + m].right != nil)
a[i + m].right.parent = a[i + m];
return a[i + m];
}
A call to rebuild(u) takes O(size(u)) time. The subtree built by rebuild(u) has minimum
height; there is no tree of smaller height that has size(u) nodes.
8.1 ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
A ScapegoatTree is a BinarySearchTree that, in addition to keeping track of the number,
n, of nodes in the tree also keeps a counter, q, that maintains an upper-bound on the
number of nodes.
ScapegoatTree
int q;
At all times, n and q obey the following inequalities:
q/2 ≤ n ≤ q .
In addition, a ScapegoatTree has logarithmic height; at all times, the height of the scape-
goat tree does not exceed:
log3/2 q ≤ log3/2 2n < log3/2 n + 2 . (8.1)
Even with this constraint, a ScapegoatTree can look surprisingly unbalanced. The tree in
Figure 8.1 has q = n = 10 and height 5 < log3/2 10 ≈ 5.679.
154
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.1. ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
7
6 8
5 9
2
1 4
0 3
Figure 8.1: A ScapegoatTree with 10 nodes and height 5.
Implementing the find(x) operation in a ScapegoatTree is done using the stan-
dard algorithm for searching in a BinarySearchTree (see Section 6.2). This takes time
proportional to the height of the tree which, by (8.1) is O(log n).
To implement the add(x) operation, we first increment n and q and then use the
usual algorithm for adding x to a binary search tree; we search for x and then add a new
leaf u with u.x = x. At this point, we may get lucky and the depth of u might not exceed
log3/2 q. If so, then we leave well enough alone and don’t do anything else.
Unfortunately, it will sometimes happen that depth(u) > log3/2 q. In this case we
need to do something to reduce the height. This isn’t a big job; there is only one node,
namely u, whose depth exceeds log3/2 q. To fix u, we walk from u back up to the root
looking for a scapegoat, w. The scapegoat, w, is a very unbalanced node. It has the property
that
size(w.child) 2
> , (8.2)
size(w) 3
where w.child is the child of w on the path from the root to u. We’ll very shortly prove that
a scapegoat exists. For now, we can take it for granted. Once we’ve found the scapegoat
w, we completely destroy the subtree rooted at w and rebuild it into a perfectly balanced
binary search tree. We know, from (8.2), that, even before the addition of u, w’s subtree was
not a complete binary tree. Therefore, when we rebuild w, the height decreases by at least
1 so that height of the ScapegoatTree is once again at most log3/2 q.
155
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.1. ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
7 7
6 8 6 8
6 2
5 7 > 3 9 3 9
3
2 6 1 4
2
1 4 3 0 2 3.5 5
1
0 3 2
3.5
Figure 8.2: Inserting 3.5 into a ScapegoatTree increases its height to 6, which violates
(8.1) since 6 > log3/2 11 ≈ 5.914. A scapegoat is found at the node containing 5.
ScapegoatTree
boolean add(T x) {
// first do basic insertion keeping track of depth
Node<T> u = newNode(x);
int d = addWithDepth(u);
if (d > log32(q)) {
// depth exceeded, find scapegoat
Node<T> w = u.parent;
while (3*size(w) <= 2*size(w.parent))
w = w.parent;
rebuild(w.parent);
}
return d >= 0;
}
If we ignore the cost of finding the scapegoat w and rebuilding the subtree rooted at
w, then the running time of add(x) is dominated by the initial search, which takes O(log q) =
O(log n) time. We will account for the cost of finding the scapegoat and rebuilding using
amortized analysis in the next section.
The implementation of remove(x) in a ScapegoatTree is very simple. We search for
x and remove it using the usual algorithm for removing a node from a BinarySearchTree.
(Note that this can never increase the height of the tree.) Next, we decrement n but leave q
unchanged. Finally, we check if q > 2n and, if so, we rebuild the entire tree into a perfectly
156
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.1. ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
balanced binary search tree and set q = n.
ScapegoatTree
boolean remove(T x) {
if (super.remove(x)) {
if (2*n < q) {
rebuild(r);
q = n;
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
Again, if we ignore the cost of rebuilding, the running time of the remove(x) operation is
proportional to the height of the tree, and is therefore O(log n).
8.1.1 Analysis of Correctness and Running-Time
In this section we analyze the correctness and amortized running time of operations on a
ScapegoatTree. We first prove the correctness by showing that, when the add(x) operation
results in a node that violates Condition (8.1), then we can always find a scapegoat:
Lemma 8.1. Let u be a node of depth h > log3/2 q in a ScapegoatTree. Then there exists a node
w on the path from u to the root such that
size(w)
> 2/3 .
size(parent(w))
Proof. Suppose, for the sake of contradiction, that this is not the case, and
size(w)
≤ 2/3 .
size(parent(w))
for all nodes w on the path from u to the root. Denote the path from the root to u as
r = u0 , . . . , uh = u. Then, we have size(u0 ) = n, size(u1 ) ≤ 23 n, size(u2 ) ≤ 49 n and, more
generally,
i
2
size(ui ) ≤ n .
3
But this gives a contradiction, since size(u) ≥ 1, hence
h log3/2 q log3/2 n
2 2 2 1
1 ≤ size(u) ≤ n< n≤ n= n=1 .
3 3 3 n
157
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.1. ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
Next, we analyze the parts of the running time that we have not yet accounted for.
There are two parts: The cost of calls to size(u) when search for scapegoat nodes, and the
cost of calls to rebuild(w) when we find a scapegoat w. The cost of calls to size(u) can be
related to the cost of calls to rebuild(w), as follows:
Lemma 8.2. During a call to add(x) in a ScapegoatTree, the cost of finding the scapegoat w
and rebuilding the subtree rooted at w is O(size(w)).
Proof. The cost of rebuilding the scapegoat node w, once we find it, is O(size(w)). When
searching for the scapegoat node, we call size(u) on a sequence of nodes u0 , . . . , uk until
we find the scapegoat uk = w. However, since uk is the first node in this sequence that is a
scapegoat, we know that
2
size(ui ) < size(ui+1 )
3
for all i ∈ {0, . . . , k − 2}. Therefore, the cost of all calls to size(u) is
k k−1
X X
O size(uk−i ) = O size(uk ) + size(uk−i−1 )
i=0 i=0
X 2 i
k−1
= O size(uk ) + size(uk )
3
i=0
k−1 i
X 2
= O size(uk ) 1 +
3
i=0
= O(size(uk )) = O(size(w)) ,
where the last line follows from the fact that the sum is a geometrically decreasing series.
All that remains is to prove an upper-bound on the cost of all calls to rebuild(u)
during a sequence of m operations:
Lemma 8.3. Starting with an empty ScapegoatTree any sequence of m add(x) and remove(x)
operations causes at most O(m log m) time to be used by rebuild(u) operations.
Proof. To prove this, we will use a credit scheme. We imagine that each node stores a
number of credits. Each credit can pay for some constant, c, units of time spent rebuilding.
The scheme gives out a total of O(m log m) credits and every call to rebuild(u) is paid for
with credits stored at u.
158
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.1. ScapegoatTree: A Binary Search Tree with Partial Rebuilding
During an insertion or deletion, we give one credit to each node on the path to
the inserted node, or deleted node, u. In this way we hand out at most log3/2 q ≤ log3/2 m
credits per operation. During a deletion we also store an additional 1 credit “on the side.”
Thus, in total we give out at most O(m log m) credits. All that remains is to show that these
credits are sufficient to pay for all calls to rebuild(u).
If we call rebuild(u) during an insertion, it is because u is a scapegoat. Suppose,
without loss of generality, that
size(u.left) 2
> .
size(u) 3
Using the fact that
size(u) = 1 + size(u.left) + size(u.right)
we deduce that
1
size(u.left) > size(u.right)
2
and therefore
1 1
size(u.left) − size(u.right) > size(u.left) > size(u) .
2 3
Now, the last time a subtree containing u was rebuilt (or when u was inserted, if a subtree
containing u was never rebuilt), we had
size(u.left) − size(u.right) ≤ 1 .
Therefore, the number of add(x) or remove(x) operations that have affected u.left or
u.right since then is at least
1
size(u) − 1 .
3
and there are therefore at least this many credits stored at u that are available to pay for
the O(size(u)) time it takes to call rebuild(u).
If we call rebuild(u) during a deletion, it is because q > 2n. In this case, we have
q − n > n credits stored “on the side” and we use these to pay for the O(n) time it takes to
rebuild the root. This completes the proof.
8.1.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the ScapegoatTree data structure:
Theorem 8.1. A ScapegoatTree implements the SSet interface. Ignoring the cost of rebuild(u)
operations, a ScapegoatTree supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(log n)
time per operation.
159
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.2. Discussion and Exercises
Furthermore, beginning with an empty ScapegoatTree, any sequence of m add(x) and
remove(x) operations results in a total of O(m log m) time spent during all calls to rebuild(u).
8.2 Discussion and Exercises
The term scapegoat tree is due to Galperin and Rivest [33], who define and analyze these
trees. However, the same structure was discovered earlier by Andersson [5, 7], who called
them general balanced trees since they can have any shape as long as their height is small.
Experimenting with the ScapegoatTree implementation will reveal that it is of-
ten considerably slower than the other SSet implementations in this book. This may be
somewhat surprising, since height bound of
log3/2 q ≈ 1.709 log n + O(1)
is better than the expected length of a search path in a Skiplist and not too far from that
of a Treap. The implementation could be optimized by storing the sizes of subtrees ex-
plicitly at each node or by reusing already computed subtree sizes (Exercises 8.5 and 8.6).
Even with these optimizations, there will always be sequences of add(x) and delete(x)
operation for which a ScapegoatTree takes longer than other SSet implementations.
This gap in performance is due to the fact that, unlike the other SSet implementa-
tions discussed in this book, a ScapegoatTree can spend a lot of time restructuring itself.
Exercise 8.3 asks you to prove that there are sequences of n operations in which a Scape-
goatTree will spend on the order of n log n time in calls to rebuild(u). This is in contrast to
other SSet implementations discussed in this book that only make O(n) structural changes
during a sequence of n operations. This is, unfortunately, a necessary consequence of the
fact that a ScapegoatTree does all its restructuring by calls to rebuild(u) [20].
Despite their lack of performance, there are applications in which a Scapegoat-
Tree could be the right choice. This would occur any time there is additional data asso-
ciated with nodes that cannot be updated in constant time when a rotation is performed,
but that can be updated during a rebuild(u) operation. In such cases, the Scapegoat-
Tree and related structures based on partial rebuilding may work. An example of such an
application is outlined in Exercise 8.12.
Exercise 8.1. Illustrate the addition of the values 1.5 and then 1.6 on the ScapegoatTree
in Figure 8.1.
Exercise 8.2. Illustrate what happens when we start with an empty ScapegoatTree and
add the sequence 1, 5, 2, 4, 3 and show where the credits described in the proof of Lemma 8.3
160
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.2. Discussion and Exercises
go, and how they are used during this sequence of additions.
Exercise 8.3. Show that, if we start with an empty ScapegoatTree and call add(x) for
x = 1, 2, 3, . . . , n, then the total time spent during calls to rebuild(u) is at least cn log n for
some constant c > 0.
Exercise 8.4. The ScapegoatTree, as described in this chapter, guarantees that the length
of the search path does not exceed log3/2 q.
1. Design, analyze, and implement a modified version of ScapegoatTree where the
length of the search path does not exceed logb q, where b is a parameter with 1 < b <
2.
2. What does your analysis and/or experiments say about the amortized cost of find(x),
add(x) and remove(x) as a function of n and b?
Exercise 8.5. Modify the add(x) method of the ScapegoatTree so that it does not waste any
time recomputing the sizes of subtrees that it has already computed the size of. This is pos-
sible because, by the time the method wants to compute size(w), it has already computed
size(w.left) or size(w.right). Compare the performance of your modified implementa-
tion with the implementation given here.
Exercise 8.6. Implement a second version of the ScapegoatTree data structure that ex-
plicitly stores and maintains the sizes of the subtree rooted at each node. Compare the
performance of the resulting implementation with that of the original ScapegoatTree im-
plementation as well as the implementation from Exercise 8.5.
Exercise 8.7. Reimplement the rebuild(u) method discussed at the beginning of this
chapter so that it does not require the use of an array to store the nodes of the subtree
being rebuilt. Instead, it should use recursion to first connect the nodes into a linked list
and then convert this linked list into a perfectly balanced binary tree. (There are very
elegant recursive implementations of both steps.)
Exercise 8.8. Analyze and implement a WeightBalancedTree. This is a tree in which each
node u, except the root, maintains the balance invariant that size(u) ≤ (2/3)size(u.parent).
The add(x) and remove(x) operations are identical to the standard BinarySearchTree op-
erations, except that any time the balance invariant is violated at a node u, the subtree
rooted at u.parent is rebuilt. Your analysis should show that operations on a WeightBal-
ancedTree run in O(log n) amortized time.
161
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.2. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 8.9. Analyze and implement a WeightBalancedTree. This is a tree in which each
node u, except the root, maintains the balance invariant that size(u) ≤ (2/3)size(u.parent).
The add(x) and remove(x) operations are identical to the standard BinarySearchTree op-
erations, except that any time the balance invariant is violated at a node u, rotations are
performed in order to restore these invariants. Your analysis should show that operations
on a WeightBalancedTree run in O(log n) worst-case time.
Exercise 8.10. Analyze and implement a CountdownTree. In a CountdownTree each node
u keeps a timer u.t. The add(x) and remove(x) operations are exactly the same as in a stan-
dard BinarySearchTree except that, whenever one of these operations affects u’s subtree,
u.t is decremented. When u.t = 0 the entire subtree rooted at u is rebuilt into a perfectly
balanced binary search tree. When a node u is involved in a rebuilding operation (either
because u is rebuilt or one of u’s ancestors is rebuilt) u.t is reset to size(u)/3.
Your analysis should show that operations on a CountdownTree run in O(log n)
amortized time. (Hint: First show that each node u satisfies some version of a balance
invariant.)
Exercise 8.11. Analyze and implement a DynamiteTree. In a DynamiteTree each node u
keeps tracks of the size of the subtree rooted at u in a variable u.size. The add(x) and
remove(x) operations are exactly the same as in a standard BinarySearchTree except that,
whenever one of these operations affects a node u’s subtree, u explodes with probability
1/u.size. When u explodes, its entire subtree is rebuilt into a perfectly balanced binary
search tree.
Your analysis should show that operations on a DynamiteTree run in O(log n) ex-
pected time.
Exercise 8.12. Design and implement a Sequence data structure that maintains a sequence
(list) of elements. It supports these operations:
• addAfter(e): Add a new element after the element e in the sequence. Return the
newly added element. (If e is null, the new element is added at the beginning of the
sequence.)
• remove(e): Remove e from the sequence.
• testBefore(e1, e2): return true if and only if e1 comes before e2 in the sequence.
The first two operations should run in O(log n) amortized time. The third operation should
run in constant-time.
162
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.2. Discussion and Exercises
The Sequence data structure can be implemented by storing the elements in some-
thing like a ScapegoatTree, in the same order that they occur in the sequence. To imple-
ment testBefore(e1, e2) in constant time, each element e is labelled with an integer that
encodes the path from the root to e. In this way, testBefore(e1, e2) can be implemented
just by comparing the labels of e1 and e2.
163
8. Scapegoat Trees 8.2. Discussion and Exercises
164
Chapter 9
Red-Black Trees
In this chapter, we present red-black trees, a version of binary search trees that have loga-
rithmic depth. Red-black trees are one of the most widely-used data structures in practice.
They appear as the primary search structure in many library implementations, including
the Java Collections Framework and several implementations of the C++ Standard Tem-
plate Library. They are also used within the Linux operating system kernel. There are
several reasons for the popularity of red-black trees:
1. A red-black tree storing n values has height at most 2 log n.
2. The add(x) and remove(x) operations on a red-black tree run in O(log n) worst-case
time.
3. The amortized number of rotations done during an add(x) or remove(x) operation is
constant.
The first two of these properties already put red-black trees ahead of skiplists, treaps, and
scapegoat trees. Skiplists and treaps rely on randomization and their O(log n) running
times are only expected. Scapegoat trees have a guaranteed bound on their height, but
add(x) and remove(x) only run in O(log n) amortized time. The third property is just icing
on the cake. It tells us that that the time needed to add or remove an element x is dwarfed
by the time it takes to find x.1
However, the nice properties of red-black trees come with a price: implementation
complexity. Maintaining a bound of 2 log n on the height is not easy. It requires a careful
analysis of a number of cases and it requires that the implementation does exactly the right
1 Note that skiplists and treaps also have this property in the expected sense. See Exercise 4.6 and Exer-
cise 7.5.
165
9. Red-Black Trees 9.1. 2-4 Trees
Figure 9.1: A 2-4 tree of height 3.
thing in each case. One misplaced rotation or change of color produces a bug that can be
very difficult to understand and track down.
Rather than jumping directly into the implementation of red-black trees, we will
first provide some background on a related data structure: 2-4 trees. This will give some
insight into how red-black trees were discovered and why efficiently maintaining red-
black trees is even possible.
9.1 2-4 Trees
A 2-4 tree is a rooted tree with the following properties:
Property 9.1 (height). All leaves have the same depth.
Property 9.2 (degree). Every internal node has 2, 3, or 4 children.
An example of a 2-4 tree is shown in Figure 9.1. The properties of 2-4 trees imply
that their height is logarithmic in the number of leaves:
Lemma 9.1. A 2-4 tree with n leaves has height at most log n.
Proof. The lower-bound of 2 on the number of children of an internal node implies that, if
the height of a 2-4 tree is h, then it has at least 2h leaves. In other words,
n ≥ 2h .
Taking logarithms on both sides of this inequality gives h ≤ log n.
9.1.1 Adding a Leaf
Adding a leaf to a 2-4 tree is easy (see Figure 9.2). If we want to add a leaf u as the child
of some node w on the second-last level, we simply make u a child of w. This certainly
166
9. Red-Black Trees 9.1. 2-4 Trees
w
w
u
w w0
u
Figure 9.2: Adding a leaf to a 2-4 Tree. This process stops after one split because w.parent
has degree less than 4 before the addition.
maintains the height property, but could violate the degree property; if w had 4 children
prior to adding u, then w now has 5 children. In this case, we split w into two nodes, w
and w’, having 2 and 3 children, respectively. But now w’ has no parent, so we recursively
make w’ a child of w’s parent. Again, this may cause w’s parent to have too many children
in which case we split it. This process goes on until we reach a node that has fewer than 4
children, or until we split the root, r, into two nodes r and r0 . In the latter case, we make
a new root that has r and r0 as children. This simultaneously increases the depth of all
leaves and so maintains the height property.
Since the height of the 2-4 tree is never more than log n, the process of adding a
leaf finishes after at most log n steps.
167
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
9.1.2 Removing a Leaf
Removing a leaf from a 2-4 tree is a little more tricky (see Figure 9.3). To remove a leaf u
from its parent w, we just remove it. If w had only two children prior to the removal of u,
then w is left with only one child and violates the degree property.
To correct this, we look at w’s sibling, w0 . The node w0 is sure to exist since w’s parent
has at least 2 children. If w0 has 3 or 4 children, then we take one of these children from w0
and give it to w. Now w has 2 children and w0 has 2 or 3 children and we are done.
On the other hand, if w0 has only two children, then we merge w and w0 into a single
node, w, that has 3 children. Next we recursively remove w0 from the parent of w0 . This
process ends when we reach a node, u, where u or its sibling has more than 2 children; or
we reach the root. In the latter case, if the root is left with only 1 child, then we delete the
root and make its child the new root. Again, this simultaneously decreases the height of
every leaf and therefore maintains the height property.
Again, since the height of the tree is never more than log n, the process of removing
a leaf finishes after at most log n steps.
9.2 RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
A red-black tree is a binary search tree in which each node, u, has a color which is either
red or black. Red is represented by the value 0 and black by the value 1.
RedBlackTree
class Node<T> extends BinarySearchTree.BSTNode<Node<T>,T> {
byte color;
}
Before and after any operation on a red-black tree, the following two properties are
satisfied. Each property is defined both in terms of the colors red and black, and in terms
of the numeric values 0 and 1.
Property 9.3 (black-height). There are the same number of black nodes on every root to
leaf path. (The sum of the colors on any root to leaf path is the same.)
Property 9.4 (no-red-edge). No two red nodes are adjacent. (For any node u, except the
root, u.color + u.parent.color ≥ 1.)
Notice that we can always color the root, r, of a red-black tree black without vi-
olating either of these two properties, so we will assume that the root is black, and the
algorithms for updating a red-black tree will maintain this. Another trick that simplifies
168
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
u
Figure 9.3: Removing a leaf from a 2-4 Tree. This process goes all the way to the root
because all of u’s ancestors and their siblings have degree 2.
169
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
Figure 9.4: An example of a red-black tree with black-height 3. External (nil) nodes are
drawn as squares.
red-black trees is to treat the external nodes (represented by nil) as black nodes. This way,
every real node, u, of a red-black tree has exactly two children, each with a well-defined
color. An example of a red-black tree is shown in Figure 9.4.
9.2.1 Red-Black Trees and 2-4 Trees
At first it might seem surprising that a red-black tree can be efficiently updated to maintain
the black-height and no-red-edge properties, and it seems unusual to even consider these
as useful properties. However, red-black trees were designed to be an efficient simulation
of 2-4 trees as binary trees.
Refer to Figure 9.5. Consider any red-black tree, T , having n nodes and perform the
following transformation: Remove each red node u and connect u’s two children directly
to the (black) parent of u. After this transformation we are left with a tree T 0 having only
black nodes.
Every internal node in T 0 has 2, 3, or 4 children: A black node that started out with
two black children will still have two black children after this transformation. A black
node that started out with one red and one black child will have three children after this
transformation. A black node that started out with two red children will have 4 children
after this transformation. Furthermore, the black-height property now guarantees that
every root-to-leaf path in T 0 has the same length. In other words, T 0 is a 2-4 tree!
The 2-4 tree T 0 has n + 1 leaves that correspond to the n + 1 external nodes of the
red-black tree. Therefore, this tree has height log(n + 1). Now, every root to leaf path in the
2-4 tree corresponds to a path from the root of the red-black tree T to an external node.
The first and last node in this path are black and at most one out of every two internal
nodes is red, so this path has at most log(n + 1) black nodes and at most log(n + 1) − 1 red
170
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
Figure 9.5: Every red-black tree has a corresponding 2-4 tree.
nodes. Therefore, the longest path from the root to any internal node in T is at most
2 log(n + 1) − 2 ≤ 2 log n ,
for any n ≥ 1. This proves the most important property of red-black trees:
Lemma 9.2. The height of red-black tree with n nodes is at most 2 log n.
Now that we have seen the relationship between 2-4 trees and red-black trees, it
is not hard to believe that we can efficiently maintain a red-black tree while adding and
removing elements.
We have already seen that adding an element in a BinarySearchTree can be done
by adding a new leaf. Therefore, to implement add(x) in a red-black tree we need a method
of simulating splitting a degree 5 node in a 2-4 tree. A degree 5 node is represented by a
black node that has two red children one of which also has a red child. We can “split” this
node by coloring it red and coloring its two children black. An example of this is shown
in Figure 9.6.
Similarly, implementing remove(x) requires a method of merging two nodes and
borrowing a child from a sibling. Merging two nodes is the inverse of a split (shown in
Figure 9.6), and involves coloring two (black) siblings red and coloring their (red) parent
black. Borrowing from a sibling is the most complicated of the procedures and involves
both rotations and recoloring of nodes.
171
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
w
w
u
w w0
u
Figure 9.6: Simulating a 2-4 tree split operation during an addition in a red-black tree.
(This simulates the 2-4 tree addition shown in Figure 9.2.)
172
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
Of course, during all of this we must still maintain the no-red-edge property and
the black-height property. While it is no longer surprising that this can be done, there are
a large number of cases that have to be considered if we try to do a direct simulation of
a 2-4 tree by a red-black tree. At some point, it just becomes simpler to forget about the
underlying 2-4 tree and work directly towards maintaining the red-black tree properties.
9.2.2 Left-Leaning Red-Black Trees
There is no single definition of a red-black tree. Rather, there are a family of structures
that manage to maintain the black-height and no-red-edge properties during add(x) and
remove(x) operations. Different structures go about it in different ways. Here, we imple-
ment a data structure that we call a RedBlackTree. This structure implements a particular
variant of red-black trees that satisfies an additional property:
Property 9.5 (left-leaning). At any node u, if u.left is black, then u.right is black.
Note that the red-black tree shown in Figure 9.4 does not satisfy the left-leaning
property; it is violated by the parent of the red node in the rightmost path.
The reason for maintaining the left-leaning property is that it reduces the number
of cases encountered when updating the tree during add(x) and remove(x) operations. In
terms of 2-4 trees, it implies that every 2-4 tree has a unique representation: A node of
degree 2 becomes a black node with 2 black children. A node of degree 3 becomes a black
node whose left child is red and whose right child is black. A node of degree 4 becomes a
black node with two red children.
Before we describe the implementation of add(x) and remove(x) in detail, we first
present some simple subroutines used by these methods that are illustrated in Figure 9.7.
The first two subroutines are for manipulating colors while preserving the black-height
property. The pushBlack(u) method takes as input a black node u that has two red chil-
dren and colors u red and its two children black. The pullBlack(u) method reverses this
operation:
RedBlackTree
void pushBlack(Node<T> u) {
u.color--;
u.left.color++;
u.right.color++;
}
void pullBlack(Node<T> u) {
u.color++;
u.left.color--;
173
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
u u u u
pushBlack(u) pullBlack(u) flipLeft(u) flipRight(u)
⇓ ⇓ ⇓ ⇓
u u
u u
Figure 9.7: Flips, pulls and pushes
u.right.color--;
}
The flipLeft(u) method swaps the colors of u and u.right and then performs a
left rotation at u. This reverses the colors of these two nodes as well as their parent-child
relationship:
RedBlackTree
void flipLeft(Node<T> u) {
swapColors(u, u.right);
rotateLeft(u);
}
The flipLeft(u) operation is especially useful in restoring the left-leaning property at a
node u that violates it (because u.left is black and u.right is red). In this special case, we
can be assured this operation preserves both the black-height and no-red-edge properties.
The flipRight(u) operation is symmetric to flipLeft(u) with the roles of left and right
reversed.
RedBlackTree
void flipRight(Node<T> u) {
swapColors(u, u.left);
rotateRight(u);
}
9.2.3 Addition
To implement add(x) in a RedBlackTree, we perform a standard BinarySearchTree inser-
tion, which adds a new leaf, u, with u.x = x and set u.color = red. Note that this does not
change the black height of any node, so it does not violate the black-height property. It
174
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
may, however, violate the left-leaning property (if u is the right child of its parent) and it
may violate the no-red-edge property (if u’s parent is red). To restore these properties, we
call the method addFixup(u).
RedBlackTree
boolean add(T x) {
Node<T> u = newNode(x);
u.color = red;
boolean added = add(u);
if (added)
addFixup(u);
return added;
}
The addFixup(u) method, illustrated in Figure 9.8, takes as input a node u whose
color is red and which may be violating the no-red-edge property and/or the left-leaning
property. The following discussion is probably impossible to follow without referring to
Figure 9.8 or recreating it on a piece of paper. Indeed, the reader may wish to study this
figure before continuing.
If u is the root of the tree, then we can color u black and this restores both proper-
ties. If u’s sibling is also red, then u’s parent must be black, so both the left-leaning and
no-red-edge properties already hold.
Otherwise, we first determine if u’s parent, w, violates the left-leaning property
and, if so, perform a flipLeft(w) operation and set u = w. This leaves us in a well-defined
state: u is the left child of its parent, w, so w now satisfies the left-leaning property. All that
remains is to ensure the no-red-edge property at u. We only have to worry about the case
where w is red, since otherwise u already satisfies the no-red-edge property.
Since we are not done yet, u is red and w is red. The no-red-edge property (which
is only violated by u and not by w) implies that u’s grandparent g exists and is black. If g’s
right child is red, then the left-leaning property ensures that both g’s children are red, and
a call to pushBlack(g) makes g red and w black. This restores the no-red-edge property at
u, but may cause it to be violated at g, so the whole process starts over with u = g.
If g’s right child is black, then a call to flipRight(g) makes w the (black) parent
of g and gives w two red children, u and g. This ensures that u satisfies the no-red-edge
property and g satisfies the left-leaning property. In this case we can stop.
RedBlackTree
void addFixup(Node<T> u) {
while (u.color == red) {
if (u == r) { // u is the root - done
175
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
u
u.parent.left.color
w w w
u u u
return flipLeft(w) ; u = w
w
u
w.color
w w
u u
g.right.color return
g g g
w w w
u u u
flipRight(g) pushBlack(g) pushBlack(g)
w new u new u
u w w
u u
return
Figure 9.8: A single round in the process of fixing Property 2 after an insertion.
176
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
u.color = black;
return;
}
Node<T> w = u.parent;
if (w.left.color == black) { // ensure left-leaning
flipLeft(w);
u = w;
w = u.parent;
}
if (w.color == black)
return; // no red-red edge = done
Node<T> g = w.parent; // grandparent of u
if (g.right.color == black) {
flipRight(g);
return;
} else {
pushBlack(g);
u = g;
}
}
}
The insertFixup(u) method takes constant time per iteration and each iteration
either finishes or moves u closer to the root. This implies that the insertFixup(u) method
finishes after O(log n) iterations in O(log n) time.
9.2.4 Removal
The remove(x) operation in a RedBlackTree is the most complicated operation to imple-
ment, and this is true of all known implementations. Like remove(x) in a BinarySearch-
Tree, this operation boils down to finding a node w with only one child, u, and splicing w
out of the tree by having w.parent adopt u.
The problem with this is that, if w is black, then the black-height property will now
be violated at w.parent. We get around this problem, temporarily, by adding w.color to
u.color. Of course, this introduces two other problems: (1) u and w both started out black,
then u.color + w.color = 2 (double black), which is an invalid color. If w was red, then it is
replaced by a black node u, which may violate the left-leaning property at u.parent. Both
of these problems are resolved with a call to the removeFixup(u) method.
RedBlackTree
boolean remove(T x) {
Node<T> u = findLast(x);
if (u == nil || compare(u.x, x) != 0)
177
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
return false;
Node<T> w = u.right;
if (w == nil) {
w = u;
u = w.left;
} else {
while (w.left != nil)
w = w.left;
u.x = w.x;
u = w.right;
}
splice(w);
u.color += w.color;
u.parent = w.parent;
removeFixup(u);
return true;
}
The removeFixup(u) method takes as input a node u whose color is black (1) or
double-black (2). If u is double-black, then removeFixup(u) performs a series of rotations
and recoloring operations that move the double-black node up the tree until it can be
gotten rid of. During this process, the node u changes until, at the end of this process, u
refers to the root of the subtree that has been changed. The root of this subtree may have
changed color. In particular, it may have gone from red to black, so the removeFixup(u)
method finishes by checking if u’s parent violates the left-leaning property and, if so, fixes
it.
RedBlackTree
void removeFixup(Node<T> u) {
while (u.color > black) {
if (u == r) {
u.color = black;
} else if (u.parent.left.color == red) {
u = removeFixupCase1(u);
} else if (u == u.parent.left) {
u = removeFixupCase2(u);
} else {
u = removeFixupCase3(u);
}
}
if (u != r) { // restore left-leaning property, if necessary
Node<T> w = u.parent;
if (w.right.color == red && w.left.color == black) {
flipLeft(w);
178
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
}
}
}
The removeFixup(u) method is illustrated in Figure 9.9. Again, the following text
will be very difficult, if not impossible, to follow without referring constantly to Figure 9.9.
Each iteration of the loop in removeFixup(u) processes the double-black node u based on
one of four cases.
Case 0: u is the root. This is the easiest case to treat. We recolor u to be black and this does
not violate any of the red-black tree properties.
Case 1: u’s sibling, v, is red. In this case, u’s sibling is the left child of its parent, w (by the
left-leaning property). We perform a right-flip at w and then proceed to the next iteration.
Note that this causes w’s parent to violate the left-leaning property and it causes the depth
of u to increase. However, it also implies that the next iteration will be in Case 3 with w
colored red. When examining Case 3, below, we will see that this means the process will
stop during the next iteration.
RedBlackTree
Node<T> removeFixupCase1(Node<T> u) {
flipRight(u.parent);
return u;
}
Case 2: u’s sibling, v, is black and u is the left child of its parent, w. In this case, we call
pullBlack(w), making u black, v red, and darkening the color of w to black or double-
black. At this point, w does not satisfy the left-leaning property, so we call flipLeft(w) to
fix this.
At this point, w is red and v is the root of the subtree we started with. We need to
check if w causes no-red-edge property to be violated. We do this by inspecting w’s right
child, q. If q is black, then w satisfies the no-red-edge property and we can continue to the
next iteration with u = v.
Otherwise (q is red), both the no-red-edge property and the left-leaning property
are violated at q and w, respectively. A call to rotateLeft(w) restores the left-leaning
property, but the no-red-edge property is still violated. At this point, q is the left child
of v and w is the left child of q, q and w are both red and v is black or double-black. A
flipRight(v) makes q the parent of both v and w. Following this up by a pushBlack(q)
makes both v and w black and sets the color of q back to the original color of w.
179
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
removeFixupCase2(u) removeFixupCase3(u) removeFixupCase1(u)
w w w
u v v u u
pullBlack(w) pullBlack(w)
flipRight(w)
w w
u v v u
flipLeft(w) flipRight(w) w
new u
v v
w w
u q
q.color q.color
v v (new u) v v
w w w
u q q q u q u
v.left.color
rotateLeft(w) rotateRight(w)
v
v v w w
q q q u q u
w w flipLeft(v) pushBlack(v)
u u
flipRight(v) flipLeft(v) w (new u)
v u w
q q q u
w v v w
u u
pushBlack(q) pushBlack(q)
q q
w v v w
u u
v.right.color
q q
w v w v
u u
flipLeft(v)
q
w
u v
Figure 9.9: A single round in the process of eliminating a double-black node after a re-
moval.
180
9. Red-Black Trees 9.2. RedBlackTree: A Simulated 2-4 Tree
At this point, there is no more double-black node and the no-red-edge and black-
height properties are reestablished. The only possible problem that remains is that the
right child of v may be red, in which case the left-leaning property is violated. We check
this and perform a flipLeft(v) to correct it if necessary.
RedBlackTree
Node<T> removeFixupCase2(Node<T> u) {
Node<T> w = u.parent;
Node<T> v = w.right;
pullBlack(w); // w.left
flipLeft(w); // w is now red
Node<T> q = w.right;
if (q.color == red) { // q-w is red-red
rotateLeft(w);
flipRight(v);
pushBlack(q);
if (v.right.color == red)
flipLeft(v);
return q;
} else {
return v;
}
}
Case 3: u’s sibling is black and u is the right child of its parent, w. This case is symmetric to
Case 2 and is handled mostly the same way. The only differences come from the fact that
the left-leaning property is asymmetric, so it requires different handling.
As before, we begin with a call to pullBlack(w), which makes v red and u black. A
call to flipRight(w) promotes v to the root of the subtree. At this point w is red, and the
code branches two ways depending on the color of w’s left child, q.
If q is red, then the code finishes up exactly the same way that Case 2 finishes up,
but is even simpler since there is no danger of v not satisfying the left-leaning property.
The more complicated case occurs when q is black. In this case, we examine the
color of v’s left child. If it is red, then v has two red children and its extra black can be
pushed down with a call to pushBlack(v). At this point, v now has w’s original color and
we are done.
If v’s left child is black then v violates the left-leaning property and we restore this
with a call to flipLeft(v). The next iteration of removeFixup(u) then continues with u = v.
RedBlackTree
Node<T> removeFixupCase3(Node<T> u) {
Node<T> w = u.parent;
181
9. Red-Black Trees 9.3. Summary
Node<T> v = w.left;
pullBlack(w);
flipRight(w); // w is now red
Node<T> q = w.left;
if (q.color == red) { // q-w is red-red
rotateRight(w);
flipLeft(v);
pushBlack(q);
return q;
} else {
if (v.left.color == red) {
pushBlack(v); // both v’s children are red
return v;
} else { // ensure left-leaning
flipLeft(v);
return w;
}
}
}
Each iteration of removeFixup(u) takes constant time. Cases 2 and 3 either finish
or move u closer to the root of the tree. Case 0 (where u is the root) always terminates and
Case 1 leads immediately to Case 3, which also terminates. Since the height of the tree is
at most 2 log n, we conclude that there are at most O(log n) iterations of removeFixup(u) so
removeFixup(u) runs in O(log n) time.
9.3 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the RedBlackTree data structure:
Theorem 9.1. A RedBlackTree implements the SSet interface. A RedBlackTree supports the
operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(log n) worst-case time per operation.
Not included in the above theorem is the extra bonus
Theorem 9.2. Beginning with an empty RedBlackTree, any sequence of m add(x) and remove(x)
operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls addFixup(u) and removeFixup(u).
We will only sketch a proof of Theorem 9.2. By comparing addFixup(u) and removeFixup(u)
with the algorithms for adding or removing a leaf in a 2-4 tree, we can convince ourselves
that this property is something that is inherited from a 2-4 tree. In particular, if we can
show that the total time spent splitting, merging, and borrowing in a 2-4 tree is O(m), then
this implies Theorem 9.2.
182
9. Red-Black Trees 9.4. Discussion and Exercises
The proof of this for 2-4 trees uses the potential method of amortized analysis.2
Define the potential of an internal node u in a 2-4 tree as
1 if u has 2 children
Φ(u) =
0 if u has 3 children
3 if u has 4 children
and the potential of a 2-4 tree as the sum of the potentials of its nodes. When a split occurs,
it is because a node of degree 4 becomes two nodes, one of degree 2 and one of degree 3.
This means that the overall potential drops by 3 − 1 − 0 = 2. When a merge occurs, two
nodes that used to have degree 2 are replaced by one node of degree 3. The result is a drop
in potential of 2 − 0 = 2. Therefore, for every split or merge, the potential decreases by 2.
Next notice that, if we ignore splitting and merging of nodes, there are only a con-
stant number of nodes whose number of children is changed by the addition or removal of
a leaf. When adding a node, one node has its number of children increase by 1, increasing
the potential by at most 3. During the removal of a leaf, one node has its number of chil-
dren decrease by 1, increasing the potential by at most 1, and two nodes may be involved
in a borrowing operation, increasing their total potential by at most 1.
To summarize, each merge and split causes the potential to drop by at least 2.
Ignoring merging and splitting, each addition or removal causes the potential to rise by
at most 3, and the potential is always non-negative. Therefore, the number of splits and
merges caused by m additions or removals on an initially empty tree is at most 3m/2.
Theorem 9.2 is a consequence of this analysis and the correspondence between 2-4 trees
and red-black trees.
9.4 Discussion and Exercises
Red-black trees were first introduced by Guibas and Sedgewick [38]. Despite their high
implementation complexity they are found in some of the most commonly used libraries
and applications. Most algorithms and data structures textbooks discuss some variant of
red-black trees.
Andersson [6] describes a left-leaning version of balanced trees that are similar to
red-black trees but have the additional constraint that any node has at most one red child.
This implies that these trees simulate 2-3 trees rather than 2-4 trees. They are significantly
simpler, though, than the RedBlackTree structure presented in this chapter.
2 See the proofs of Lemma 2.2 and Lemma 3.1 for other applications of the potential method.
183
9. Red-Black Trees 9.4. Discussion and Exercises
Sedgewick [66] describes at least two versions of left-leaning red-black trees. These
use recursion along with a simulation of top-down splitting and merging in 2-4 trees. The
combination of these two techniques makes for particularly short and elegant code.
A related, and older, data structure is the AVL tree [3]. AVL trees are height-
balanced: At each node u, the height of the subtree rooted at u.left and the subtree rooted
at u.right differ by at most one. It follows immediately that, if F(h) is the minimum num-
ber of leaves in a tree of height h, then F(h) obeys the Fibonacci recurrence
F(h) = F(h − 1) + F(h − 2)
√
with base cases F(0) = 1 and F(1) = 1. This means F(h) is approximately ϕ h / 5, where
√ √
ϕ = (1 + 5)/2 ≈ 1.61803399 is the golden ratio. (More precisely, |ϕ h / 5 − F(h)| ≤ 1/2.)
Arguing as in the proof of Lemma 9.1, this implies
h ≤ logϕ n ≈ 1.440420088 log n ,
so AVL trees have smaller height than red-black trees. The height-balanced property can
be maintained during add(x) and remove(x) operations by walking back up the path to the
root and performing a rebalancing operation at each node u where the height of u’s left
and right subtrees differ by 2. See Figure 9.10.
Andersson’s variant of red-black trees, Sedgewick’s variant of red-black trees, and
AVL trees are all simpler to implement than the RedBlackTree structure defined here.
Unfortunately, none of them can guarantee that the amortized time spent rebalancing is
O(1) per update. In particular, there is no analogue of Theorem 9.2 for those structures.
Exercise 9.1. Illustrate the 2-4 tree that corresponds to the RedBlackTree in Figure 9.11.
Exercise 9.2. Illustrate the addition of 13, then 3.5, then 3.3 on the RedBlackTree in Fig-
ure 9.11.
Exercise 9.3. Illustrate the removal of 11, then 9, then 5 on the RedBlackTree in Fig-
ure 9.11.
Exercise 9.4. Show that, for arbitrarily large values of n, there are red-black trees with n
nodes that have height 2 log n − O(1).
Exercise 9.5. Show that, for arbitrarily large values of n, there exist sequences of add(x)
and remove(x) operations that lead to red-black trees with n nodes that have height 2 log n−
O(1).
184
9. Red-Black Trees 9.4. Discussion and Exercises
h
h+2
h
h+2
h+1
Figure 9.10: Rebalancing in an AVL tree. At most 2 rotations are required to convert a
node whose subtrees have height h and h + 2 into a node whose subtrees each have height
at most h + 1.
6
4 10
2 5 8 12
1 3 7 9 11
Figure 9.11: A red-black tree to practice on.
185
9. Red-Black Trees 9.4. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 9.6. Why does the method remove(x) in the RedBlackTree implementation per-
form the assignment u.parent = w.parent? Shouldn’t this already be done by the call to
splice(w)?
Exercise 9.7. Suppose a 2-4 tree, T , has n` leaves and ni internal nodes.
1. What is the minimum value of ni , as a function of n` ?
2. What is the maximum value of ni , as a function of n` ?
3. If T 0 is a red-black tree that represents T , then how many red nodes does T 0 have?
Exercise 9.8. Suppose you are given a binary search tree with n nodes and height at most
2 log n − 2. Is it always possible to color the nodes red and black so that the tree satisfies
the black-height and no-red-edge properties? If so, can it also be made to satisfy the left-
leaning property?
Exercise 9.9. Suppose you have two red-black trees T1 and T2 that have the same black
height, h, and that the largest key in T1 is smaller than the smallest key in T2 . Show how
to merge T1 and T2 in into a single red-black tree in O(h) time.
Exercise 9.10. Extend your solution to Exercise 9.9 to the case where the two trees T1 and
T2 have different black heights, h1 , h2 . The running-time should be O(max{h1 , h2 }).
Exercise 9.11. Prove that, during an add(x) operation, an AVL tree must perform at most
one rebalancing operation (that involves at most 2 rotations; see Figure 9.10). Give an
example of an AVL tree and a remove(x) operation on that tree that requires on the order
of log n rebalancing operations.
Exercise 9.12. Implement an AVLTree class that implements AVL trees as described above.
Compare its performance to that of the RedBlackTree implementation. Which implemen-
tation has a faster find(x) operation?
Exercise 9.13. Design and implement a series of experiments that compare the relative
performance of find(x), add(x), and remove(x) for SkiplistSSet, ScapegoatTree, Treap,
and RedBlackTree. Be sure to include multiple test scenarios, including cases where the
data is random, already sorted, is removed in random order, is removed in sorted order,
and so on.
186
Chapter 10
Heaps
In this chapter, we discuss two implementations of the extremely useful priority Queue
data structure. Both of these structures are a special kind of binary tree called a heap,
which means “a disorganized pile.” This is in contrast to binary search trees that can
thought of as a highly organized pile.
The first heap implementation uses an array to simulate a complete binary tree. It
is very fast and is the basis of one of the fastest known sorting algorithms, namely heapsort
(see Section 11.1.3). The second implementation is based on more flexible binary trees. It
supports a meld(h) operation that allows the priority queue to absorb the elements of a
second priority queue h.
10.1 BinaryHeap: An Implicit Binary Tree
Our first implementation of a (priority) Queue is based on a technique that is over 400
years old. Eytzinger’s method allows us to represent a complete binary tree as an array. This
is done by laying out the nodes of the tree in breadth-first order (see Section 6.1.2) in the
array. In this way, the root is stored at position 0, the root’s left child is stored at position
1, the root’s right child at position 2, the left child of the left child of the root is stored at
position 3, and so on. See Figure 10.1.
If we do this for a large enough tree, some patterns emerge. The left child of the
node at index i is at index left(i) = 2i + 1 and the right child of the node at index i is at
index right(i) = 2i + 2. The parent of the node at index i is at index parent(i) = (i − 1)/2.
BinaryHeap
int left(int i) {
return 2*i + 1;
}
int right(int i) {
return 2*i + 2;
}
187
10. Heaps 10.1. BinaryHeap: An Implicit Binary Tree
0
1 2
3 4 5 6
7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Figure 10.1: Eytzinger’s method represents a complete binary tree as an array.
int parent(int i) {
return (i-1)/2;
}
A BinaryHeap uses this technique to implicitly represent a complete binary tree in
which the elements are heap-ordered: The value stored at any index i is not smaller than
the value stored at index parent(i), with the exception of the root value, i = 0. It follows
that the smallest value in the priority Queue is therefore stored at position 0 (the root).
In a BinaryHeap, the n elements are stored in an array a:
BinaryHeap
T[] a;
int n;
Implementing the add(x) operation is fairly straightforward. As with all array-
based structures, we first check if a is full (because a.length = n) and, if so, we grow a.
Next, we place x at location a[n] and increment n. At this point, all that remains is to
ensure that we maintain the heap property. We do this by repeatedly swapping x with its
parent until x is no longer smaller than its parent. See Figure 10.2.
BinaryHeap
boolean add(T x) {
if (n + 1 > a.length) resize();
a[n++] = x;
bubbleUp(n-1);
return true;
}
void bubbleUp(int i) {
int p = parent(i);
188
10. Heaps 10.1. BinaryHeap: An Implicit Binary Tree
while (i > 0 && compare(a[i], a[p]) < 0) {
swap(i,p);
i = p;
p = parent(i);
}
}
Implementing the remove() operation, which removes the smallest value from the
heap, is a little trickier. We know where the smallest value is (at the root), but we need to
replace it after we remove it and ensure that we maintain the heap property.
The easiest way to do this is to replace the root with the value a[n − 1], delete that
value, and decrement n. Unfortunately, the new root element is now probably not the
smallest element, so it needs to be moved downwards. We do this by repeatedly compar-
ing this element to its two children. If it is the smallest of the three then we are done.
Otherwise, we swap this element with the smallest of its two children and continue.
BinaryHeap
T remove() {
T x = a[0];
a[0] = a[--n];
trickleDown(0);
if (3*n < a.length) resize();
return x;
}
void trickleDown(int i) {
do {
int j = -1;
int r = right(i);
if (r < n && compare(a[r], a[i]) < 0) {
int l = left(i);
if (compare(a[l], a[r]) < 0) {
j = l;
} else {
j = r;
}
} else {
int l = left(i);
if (l < n && compare(a[l], a[i]) < 0) {
j = l;
}
}
if (j >= 0) swap(i, j);
i = j;
189
10. Heaps 10.1. BinaryHeap: An Implicit Binary Tree
4
9 8
17 26 50 16
19 69 32 93 55
4 9 8 17 26 50 16 19 69 32 93 55
4
9 8
17 26 50 16
19 69 32 93 55 6
4 9 8 17 26 50 16 19 69 32 93 55 6
4
9 8
17 26 6 16
19 69 32 93 55 50
4 9 8 17 26 6 16 19 69 32 93 55 50
4
9 6
17 26 8 16
19 69 32 93 55 50
4 9 6 17 26 8 16 19 69 32 93 55 50
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Figure 10.2: Adding the value 6 to a BinaryHeap.
190
10. Heaps 10.2. MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
} while (i >= 0);
}
As with other array-based structures, we will ignore the time spent in calls to
resize(), since these can be accounted for with the amortization argument from Lemma 2.1.
The running times of both add(x) and remove() then depend on the height of the (implicit)
binary tree. Luckily, this is a complete binary tree; every level except the last has the maxi-
mum possible number of nodes. Therefore, if the height of this tree is h, then it has at least
2h nodes. Stated another way
n ≥ 2h .
Taking logarithms on both sides of this equation gives
h ≤ log n .
Therefore, both the add(x) and remove() operation run in O(log n) time.
10.1.1 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of a BinaryHeap:
Theorem 10.1. A BinaryHeap implements the (priority) Queue interface. Ignoring the cost of
calls to resize(), a BinaryHeap supports the operations add(x) and remove() in O(log n) time
per operation.
Furthermore, beginning with an empty BinaryHeap, any sequence of m add(x) and
remove() operations results in a total of O(m) time spent during all calls to resize().
10.2 MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
In this section, we describe the MeldableHeap, a priority Queue implementation in which
the underlying structure is also a heap-ordered binary tree. However, unlike a BinaryHeap
in which the underlying binary tree is completely defined by the number of elements, there
are no restrictions on the shape of the binary tree that underlies a MeldableHeap; anything
goes.
The add(x) and remove() operations in a MeldableHeap are implemented in terms
of the merge(h1, h2) operation. This operation takes two heap nodes h1 and h2 and merges
them, returning a heap node that is the root of a heap that contains all elements in the
subtree rooted at h1 and all elements in the subtree rooted at h2.
The nice thing about a merge(h1, h2) operation is that it can be defined recursively.
See Figure 10.4. If either of h1 or h2 is nil, then we are merging with an empty set, so we
191
10. Heaps 10.2. MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
4
9 6
17 26 8 16
19 69 32 93 55 50
4 9 6 17 26 8 16 19 69 32 93 55 50
50
9 6
17 26 8 16
19 69 32 93 55
50 9 6 17 26 8 16 19 69 32 93 55
6
9 50
17 26 8 16
19 69 32 93 55
6 9 50 17 26 8 16 19 69 32 93 55
6
9 8
17 26 50 16
19 69 32 93 55
6 9 8 17 26 50 16 19 69 32 93 55
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14
Figure 10.3: Removing the minimum value, 4, from a BinaryHeap.
192
10. Heaps 10.2. MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
return h2 or h1, respectively. Otherwise, assume h1.x ≤ h2.x since, if h1.x > h2.x, then we
can reverse the roles of h1 and h2. Then we know that the root of the merged heap will
contain h1.x and we can recursively merge h2 with h1.left or h1.right, as we wish. This
is where randomization comes in, and we toss a coin to decide whether to merge h2 with
h1.left or h1.right:
MeldableHeap
Node<T> merge(Node<T> h1, Node<T> h2) {
if (h1 == nil) return h2;
if (h2 == nil) return h1;
if (compare(h2.x, h1.x) < 0) return merge(h2, h1);
// now we know h1.x <= h2.x
if (rand.nextBoolean()) {
h1.left = merge(h1.left, h2);
h1.left.parent = h1;
} else {
h1.right = merge(h1.right, h2);
h1.right.parent = h1;
}
return h1;
}
In the next section, we show that merge(h1, h2) runs in O(log n) expected time,
where n is the total number of elements in h1 and h2.
With access to a merge(h1, h2) operation, the add(x) operation is easy. We create a
new node u containing x and then merge u with the root of our heap:
MeldableHeap
boolean add(T x) {
Node<T> u = newNode();
u.x = x;
r = merge(u, r);
r.parent = nil;
n++;
return true;
}
This takes O(log(n + 1)) = O(log n) expected time.
The remove() operation is similarly easy. The node we want to remove is the root,
so we just merge its two children and make the result the root:
MeldableHeap
T remove() {
T x = r.x;
193
10. Heaps 10.2. MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
h1 merge(h1, h2) h2
4 19
9 8 25 20
17 26 50 16 28 89
19 55 32 93 99
⇓
4
9
17 26 merge(h1.right, h2)
8 19
19
50 16 25 20
55 28 89
32 93 99
Figure 10.4: Merging h1 and h2 is done by merging h2 with one of h1.left or h1.right.
194
10. Heaps 10.2. MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
r = merge(r.left, r.right);
if (r != nil) r.parent = nil;
n--;
return x;
}
Again, this takes O(log n) expected time.
Additionally, a MeldableHeap can implement many other operations in O(log n)
expected time, including:
• remove(u): remove the node u (and its key u.x) from the heap.
• absorb(h): add all the elements of the MeldableHeap h to this heap, emptying h in
the process.
Each of these operations can be implemented using a constant number of merge(h1, h2)
operations that each take O(log n) time.
10.2.1 Analysis of merge(h1, h2)
The analysis of merge(h1, h2) is based on the analysis of a random walk in a binary tree.
A random walk in a binary tree is a walk that starts at the root of the tree. At each step
in the walk, a coin is tossed and the walk proceeds to the left or right child of the current
node depending on the result of this coin toss. The walk ends when it falls off the tree (the
current node becomes nil).
The following lemma is somewhat remarkable because it does not depend at all on
the shape of the binary tree:
Lemma 10.1. The expected length of a random walk in a binary tree with n nodes is at most
log(n + 1).
Proof. The proof is by induction on n. In the base case, n = 0 and the walk has length
0 = log(n + 1). Suppose now that the result is true for all non-negative integers n0 < n.
Let n1 denote the size of the root’s left subtree, so that n2 = n − n1 − 1 is the size of
the root’s right subtree. Starting at the root, the walk takes one step and then continues in
a subtree of size n1 or continues in a subtree of size n2 . By our inductive hypothesis, the
expected length of the walk is then
1 1
E[W ] = 1 + log(n1 + 1) + log(n2 + 1) ,
2 2
195
10. Heaps 10.2. MeldableHeap: A Randomized Meldable Heap
since each of n1 and n2 are less than n. Since log is a concave function, E[W ] is maximized
when n1 = n2 = (n − 1)/2. Therefore, the expected number of steps taken by the random
walk is
1 1
E[W ] = 1 + log(n1 + 1) + log(n2 + 1)
2 2
≤ 1 + log((n − 1)/2 + 1)
= 1 + log((n + 1)/2)
= log(n + 1) .
We make a quick digression to note that, for readers who know a little about infor-
mation theory, the proof of Lemma 10.1 can be stated in terms of entropy.
Information Theoretic Proof of Lemma 10.1. Let di denote the depth of the ith external node
and recall that a binary tree with n nodes has n + 1 external nodes. The probability of the
random walk reaching the ith external node is exactly pi = 1/2di , so the expected length of
the random walk is given by
n
X n
X X n
H= pi di = pi log 2di = pi log(1/pi )
i=0 i=0 i=0
The right hand side of this equation is easily recognizable as the entropy of a probability
distribution over n + 1 elements. A basic fact about the entropy of a distribution over n + 1
elements is that it does not exceed log(n + 1), which proves the lemma.
With this result on random walks, we can now easily prove that the running time
of the merge(h1, h2) operation is O(log n).
Lemma 10.2. If h1 and h2 are the roots of two heaps containing n1 and n2 nodes, respectively,
then the expected running time of merge(h1, h2) is at most O(log n), where n = n1 + n2 .
Proof. Each step of the merge algorithm takes one step of a random walk, either in the heap
rooted at h1 or the heap rooted at h2 The algorithm terminates when either of these two
random walks fall out of its corresponding tree (when h1 = null or h2 = null). Therefore,
the expected number of steps performed by the merge algorithm is at most
log(n1 + 1) + log(n2 + 1) ≤ 2 log n .
196
10. Heaps 10.3. Discussion and Exercises
10.2.2 Summary
The following theorem summarizes the performance of a MeldableHeap:
Theorem 10.2. A MeldableHeap implements the (priority) Queue interface. A MeldableHeap
supports the operations add(x) and remove() in O(log n) expected time per operation.
10.3 Discussion and Exercises
The implicit representation of a complete binary tree as an array, or list, seems to have
been first proposed by Eytzinger [27], as a representation for pedigree family trees. The
BinaryHeap data structure described here was first introduced by Williams [76].
The randomized MeldableHeap data structure described here appears to have first
been proposed by Gambin and Malinowski [34]. Other meldable heap implementations
exist, including leftist heaps [16, 48, Section 5.3.2], binomial heaps [73], Fibonacci heaps
[32], pairing heaps [31], and skew heaps [70], although none of these are as simple as the
MeldableHeap structure.
Some of the above structures also support a decreaseKey(u, y) operation in which
the value stored at node u is decreased to y. (It is a pre-condition that y ≤ u.x.) This
operation can be implemented in O(log n) time in most of the above structures by removing
node u and adding y. However, some of these structures can implement decreaseKey(u, y)
more efficiently. In particular, decreaseKey(u, y) takes O(1) amortized time in Fibonacci
heaps and O(log log n) amortized time in a special version of pairing heaps [25]. This
more efficient decreaseKey(u, y) operation has applications in speeding up several graph
algorithms including Dijkstra’s shortest path algorithm [32].
Exercise 10.1. Illustrate the addition of the values 7 and then 3 to the BinaryHeap shown
at the end of Figure 10.2.
Exercise 10.2. Illustrate the removal of the next two values (6 and 8) on the BinaryHeap
shown at the end of Figure 10.3.
Exercise 10.3. Implement the remove(i) method, that removes the value stored in a[i] in
a BinaryHeap. This method should run in O(log n) time. Next, explain why this method is
not likely to be useful.
Exercise 10.4. A d-ary tree is a generalization of a binary tree in which each internal node
has d children. Using Eytzinger’s method it is also possible to represent complete d-ary
trees using arrays. Work out the equations that, given an index i, determine the index of
i’s parent and each of i’s d children in this representation.
197
10. Heaps 10.3. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 10.5. Using what you learned in Exercise 10.4, design and implement a DaryHeap,
the d-ary generalization of a BinaryHeap. Analyze the running times of operations on a
DaryHeap and test the performance of your DaryHeap implementation against that of the
BinaryHeap implementation given here.
Exercise 10.6. Illustrate the addition of the values 17 and then 82 in the MeldableHeap h1
shown in Figure 10.4. Use a coin to simulate a random bit when needed.
Exercise 10.7. Illustrate the removal of the next two values (4 and 8) in the MeldableHeap
h1 shown in Figure 10.4. Use a coin to simulate a random bit when needed.
Exercise 10.8. Implement the remove(u) method, that removes the node u from a Meld-
ableHeap. This method should run in O(log n) expected time.
Exercise 10.9. Show how, in a BinaryHeap or MeldableHeap, to find the second smallest
value in constant time.
Exercise 10.10. Show how, in a BinaryHeap or MeldableHeap, to find the kth smallest
value in O(k log k) time. (Hint: Using another heap might help.)
Exercise 10.11. Suppose you are given k sorted lists, of total length n. Show how, using
a heap, to merge these into a single sorted list in O(n log k) time. (Hint: Starting with the
case k = 2 can be instructive.)
198
Chapter 11
Sorting Algorithms
This chapter discusses algorithms for sorting a set of n items. This might seem like a
strange topic for a book on data structures, but there are several good reasons for including
it here. The most obvious reason is that two of these sorting algorithms (quicksort and
heap-sort) are intimately related to two of the data structures we have already studied
(random binary search trees and heaps, respectively).
The first part of this chapter discusses algorithms that sort using only comparisons
and presents three algorithms that run in O(n log n) time. As it turns out, all three al-
gorithms are asymptotically optimal; no algorithm that uses only comparisons can avoid
doing roughly n log n comparisons in the worst-case and even the average-case.
Before continuing, we should note that any of the SSet or priority Queue imple-
mentations presented in previous chapters can also be used to obtain an O(n log n) time
sorting algorithm. For example, we can sort n items by performing n add(x) operations
followed by n remove() operations on a BinaryHeap or MeldableHeap. Alternatively, we
can use n add(x) operations on any of the binary search tree data structures and then per-
form an in-order traversal (Exercise 6.8) to extract the elements in sorted order. However,
in both cases we go through a lot of overhead to build a structure that is never fully used.
Sorting is such an important problem that it is worthwhile developing direct methods that
are as fast, simple, and space-efficient as possible.
The second part of this chapter shows that, if we allow other operations besides
comparisons, then all bets are off. Indeed, by using array-indexing, it is possible to sort a
set of n integers in the range {0, . . . , nc − 1} in O(cn) time.
199
11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
11.1 Comparison-Based Sorting
In this section, we present three sorting algorithms: merge-sort, quicksort, and heap-sort.
All these algorithms take an input array a and sort the elements of a into non-decreasing
order in O(n log n) (expected) time. These algorithms are all comparison-based. Their sec-
ond argument, c, is a Comparator that implements the compare(a, b) method. These algo-
rithms don’t care what type of data is being sorted, the only operation they do on the data is
comparisons using the compare(a, b) method. Recall, from Section 1.1.4, that compare(a, b)
returns a negative value if a < b, a positive value if a > b, and zero if a = b.
11.1.1 Merge-Sort
The merge-sort algorithm is a classic example of recursive divide and conquer: If the length
of a is at most 1, then a is already sorted, so we do nothing. Otherwise, we split a into two
halves, a0 = a[0], . . . , a[n/2 − 1] and a1 = a[n/2], . . . , a[n − 1]. We recursively sort a0 and a1,
and then we merge (the now sorted) a0 and a1 to get our fully sorted array a:
Algorithms
<T> void mergeSort(T[] a, Comparator<T> c) {
if (a.length <= 1) return;
T[] a0 = Arrays.copyOfRange(a, 0, a.length/2);
T[] a1 = Arrays.copyOfRange(a, a.length/2, a.length);
mergeSort(a0, c);
mergeSort(a1, c);
merge(a0, a1, a, c);
}
An example is shown in Figure 11.1.
Compared to sorting, merging the two sorted arrays a0 and a1 is fairly easy. We
add elements to a one at a time. If a0 or a1 is empty we add the next elements from the
other (non-empty) array. Otherwise, we take the minimum of the next element in a0 and
the next element in a1 and add it to a:
Algorithms
<T> void merge(T[] a0, T[] a1, T[] a, Comparator<T> c) {
int i0 = 0, i1 = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
if (i0 == a0.length)
a[i] = a1[i1++];
else if (i1 == a1.length)
a[i] = a0[i0++];
else if (compare(a0[i0], a1[i1]) < 0)
a[i] = a0[i0++];
200
11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
a 13 8 5 2 4 0 6 9 7 3 12 1 10 11
a0 13 8 5 2 4 0 6 9 7 3 12 1 10 11 a1
mergeSort(a0, c) mergeSort(a1, c)
a0 0 2 4 5 6 8 13 1 3 7 9 10 11 12 a1
merge(a0, a1, a)
a 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Figure 11.1: The execution of mergeSort(a, c)
else
a[i] = a1[i1++];
}
}
Notice that the merge(a0, a1, a, c) algorithm performs at most n − 1 comparisons before
running out of elements in one of a0 or a1.
To understand the running-time of merge-sort, it is easiest to think of it in terms
of its recursion tree. Suppose for now that n is a power of 2, so that n = 2log n , and log n is
an integer. Refer to Figure 11.2. Merge-sort turns the problem of sorting n elements into
2 problems, each of sorting n/2 elements. These two subproblem are then turned into 2
problems each, for a total of 4 subproblems, each of size n/4. These 4 subproblems become
8 subproblems, each of size n/8, and so on. At the bottom of this process, n/2 subproblems,
each of size 2, are converted into n problems, each of size 1. For each subproblem of size
n/2i , the time spent merging and copying data is O(n/2i ). Since there are 2i subproblems
of size n/2i , the total time spent working on problems of size 2i , not counting recursive
calls, is
2i × O(n/2i ) = O(n) .
Therefore, the total amount of time taken by merge-sort is
log
Xn
O(n) = O(n log n) .
i=0
201
11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
n =n
n n
2 2 =n
n n n n
4 + 4 + 4 + 4 =n
n n n n n n n n
8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 + 8 =n
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . . .
2 + 2 + 2 + ··· + 2 + 2 + 2 =n
1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + ··· + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 =n
Figure 11.2: The merge-sort recursion tree.
The proof of the following theorem is based on the same analysis as above, but has
to be a little more careful to deal with the cases where n is not a power of 2.
Theorem 11.1. The mergeSort(a, c) algorithm runs in O(n log n) time and performs at most
n log n comparisons.
Proof. The proof is by induction on n. The base case, in which n = 1, is trivial; when
presented with an array of length 0 or 1 the algorithm simply returns without performing
any comparisons.
Merging two sorted lists of total length n requires at most n − 1 comparisons. Let
C(n) denote the maximum number of comparisons performed by mergeSort(a, c) on an
array a of length n. If n is even, then we apply the inductive hypothesis to the two sub-
problems and obtain
C(n) ≤ n − 1 + 2C(n/2)
≤ n − 1 + 2((n/2) log(n/2))
= n − 1 + n log(n/2)
= n − 1 + n log n − n
< n log n .
202
11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
The case where n is odd is slightly more complicated. For this case, we use two inequalities,
that are easy to verify:
log(x + 1) ≤ log(x) + 1 , (11.1)
for all x ≥ 1 and
log(x + 1/2) + log(x − 1/2) ≤ 2 log(x) , (11.2)
for all x ≥ 1/2. Inequality (11.1) comes from the fact that log(x) + 1 = log(2x) while (11.2)
follows from the fact that log is a concave function. With these tools in hand we have, for
odd n,
C(n) ≤ n − 1 + C(dn/2e) + C(bn/2c)
≤ n − 1 + dn/2e logdn/2e + bn/2c logbn/2c
= n − 1 + (n/2 + 1/2) log(n/2 + 1/2) + (n/2 − 1/2) log(n/2 − 1/2)
≤ n − 1 + n log(n/2) + (1/2)(log(n/2 + 1/2) − log(n/2 − 1/2))
≤ n − 1 + n log(n/2) + 1/2
< n + n log(n/2)
= n + n(log n − 1)
= n log n .
11.1.2 Quicksort
The quicksort algorithm is another classic divide and conquer algorithm. Unlike merge-
sort, which does merging after solving the two subproblems, quicksort does all its work
upfront.
Quicksort is simple to describe: Pick a random pivot element, x, from a; partition a
into the set of elements less than x, the set of elements equal to x, and the set of elements
greater than x; and, finally, recursively sort the first and third sets in this partition. An
example is shown in Figure 11.3.
Algorithms
<T> void quickSort(T[] a, Comparator<T> c) {
quickSort(a, 0, a.length, c);
}
<T> void quickSort(T[] a, int i, int n, Comparator<T> c) {
if (n <= 1) return;
T x = a[i + rand.nextInt(n)];
int p = i-1, j = i, q = i+n;
// a[i..p]<x, a[p+1..q-1]??x, a[q..i+n-1]>x
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
x
13 8 5 2 4 0 6 9 7 3 12 1 10 11
1 8 5 2 4 0 6 7 3 9 12 10 11 13
quickSort(a, 0, 9) quickSort(a, 10, 4)
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13
Figure 11.3: An example execution of quickSort(a, 0, 14, c)
while (j < q) {
int comp = compare(a[j], x);
if (comp < 0) { // move to beginning of array
swap(a, j++, ++p);
} else if (comp > 0) {
swap(a, j, --q); // move to end of array
} else {
j++; // keep in the middle
}
}
// a[i..p]<x, a[p+1..q-1]=x, a[q..i+n-1]>x
quickSort(a, i, p-i+1, c);
quickSort(a, q, n-(q-i), c);
}
All of this is done in-place, so that instead of making copies of subarrays being sorted,
the quickSort(a, i, n, c) method only sorts the subarray a[i], . . . , a[i + n − 1]. Initially, this
method is called as quickSort(a, 0, a.length, c).
At the heart of the quicksort algorithm is the in-place partitioning algorithm. This
algorithm, without using any extra space, swaps elements in a and computes indices p and
q so that
<x if 0 ≤ i ≤ p
a[i]
=x if p < i < q
>x if q ≤ i ≤ n − 1
This partitioning, which is done by the while loop in the code, works by iteratively in-
creasing p and decreasing q while maintaining the first and last of these conditions. At
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
each step, the element at position j is either moved to the front, left where it is, or moved
to the back. In the first two cases, j is incremented, while in the last case, j is not incre-
mented since the new element at position j has not been processed yet.
Quicksort is very closely related to the random binary search trees studied in Sec-
tion 7.1. In fact, if the input to quicksort consists of n distinct elements, then the quicksort
recursion tree is a random binary search tree. To see this, recall that when constructing a
random binary search tree the first thing we do is pick a random element x and make it the
root of the tree. After this, every element will eventually be compared to x, with smaller
elements going into the left subtree and larger elements going into the right subtree.
In quicksort, we select a random element x and immediately compare everything
to x, putting the smaller elements at the beginning of the array and larger elements at the
end of the array. Quicksort then recursively sorts the beginning of the array and the end
of the array, while the random binary search tree recursively inserts smaller elements in
the left subtree of the root and larger elements in the right subtree of the root.
The above correspondence between random binary search trees and quicksort means
that we can translate Lemma 7.1 to a statement about quicksort:
Lemma 11.1. When quicksort is called to sort an array containing the integers 0, . . . , n − 1, the
expected number of times element i is compared to a pivot element is at most Hi+1 + Hn−i .
A little summing of harmonic numbers gives us the following theorem about the
running time of quicksort:
Theorem 11.2. When quicksort is called to sort an array containing n distinct elements, the
expected number of comparisons performed is at most 2n ln n + O(n).
Proof. Let T be the number of comparisons performed by quicksort when sorting n distinct
elements. Using Lemma 11.1, we have:
n−1
X
E[T ] = (Hi+1 + Hn−i )
i=0
Xn
=2 Hi
i=1
n
X
≤2 Hn
i=1
≤ 2n ln n + 2n = 2n ln n + O(n)
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
Theorem 11.3 describes the case where the elements being sorted are all distinct.
When the input array, a, contains duplicate elements, the expected running time of quick-
sort is no worse, and can be even better; any time a duplicate element x is chosen as a
pivot, all occurrences of x get grouped together and don’t take part in either of the two
subproblems.
Theorem 11.3. The quickSort(a, c) method runs in O(n log n) expected time and the expected
number of comparisons it performs is at most 2n ln n + O(n).
11.1.3 Heap-sort
The heap-sort algorithm is another in-place sorting algorithm. Heap-sort uses the binary
heaps discussed in Section 10.1. Recall that the BinaryHeap data structure represents a
heap using a single array. The heap-sort algorithm converts the input array a into a heap
and then repeatedly extracts the minimum value.
More specifically, a heap stores n elements at array locations a[0], . . . , a[n − 1] with
the smallest value stored at the root, a[0]. After transforming a into a BinaryHeap, the
heap-sort algorithm repeatedly swaps a[0] and a[n − 1], decrements n, and calls trickleDown(0)
so that a[0], . . . , a[n − 2] once again are a valid heap representation. When this process ends
(because n = 0) the elements of a are stored in decreasing order, so a is reversed to obtain
the final sorted order.1 Figure 11.1.3 shows an example of the execution of heapSort(a, c).
BinaryHeap
<T> void sort(T[] a, Comparator<T> c) {
BinaryHeap<T> h = new BinaryHeap<T>(a, c);
while (h.n > 1) {
h.swap(--h.n, 0);
h.trickleDown(0);
}
Collections.reverse(Arrays.asList(a));
}
A key subroutine in heap sort is the constructor for turning an unsorted array
a into a heap. It would be easy to do this in O(n log n) time by repeatedly calling the
BinaryHeap add(x) method, but we can do better by using a bottom-up algorithm. Recall
that, in a binary heap, the children of a[i] are stored at positions a[2i + 1] and a[2i + 2].
This implies that the elements a[bn/2c], . . . , a[n − 1] have no children. In other words, each
1 The algorithm could alternatively redefine the compare(x, y) function so that the heap sort algorithm stores
the elements directly in ascending order.
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
5
9 6
10 13 8 7
11 12
5 9 6 10 13 8 7 11 12 4 3 2 1 0
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 11 12 13 14 15
Figure 11.4: A snapshot of the execution of heapSort(a, c). The shaded part of the array is
already sorted. The unshaded part is a BinaryHeap. During the next iteration, element 5
will be placed into array location 8.
of a[bn/2c], . . . , a[n − 1] is a sub-heap of size 1. Now, working backwards, we can call
trickleDown(i) for each i ∈ {bn/2c − 1, . . . , 0}. This works, because by the time we call
trickleDown(i), each of the two children of a[i] are the root of a sub-heap so calling
trickleDown(i) makes a[i] into the root of its own subheap.
BinaryHeap
BinaryHeap(T[] a, Comparator<T> c) {
this.c = c;
this.a = a;
n = a.length;
for (int i = n/2-1; i >= 0; i--) {
trickleDown(i);
}
}
The interesting thing about this bottom-up strategy is that it is more efficient than
calling add(x) n times. To see this, notice that, for n/2 elements, we do no work at all, for
n/4 elements, we call trickleDown(i) on a subheap rooted at a[i] and whose height is 1,
for n/8 elements, we call trickleDown(i) on a subheap whose height is 2, and so on. Since
the work done by trickleDown(i) is proportional to the height of the sub-heap rooted at
a[i], this means that the total work done is at most
log
Xn ∞
X ∞
X
i i
O((i − 1)n/2 ) ≤ O(in/2 ) = O(n) i/2i = O(2n) = O(n) .
i=1 i=1 i=1
P∞ i
The second-last equality follows by recognizing that the sum i=1 i/2 is equal, by defini-
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
tion, to the expected number times we toss a coin up to and including the first time the
coin comes up as heads and applying Lemma 4.2.
The following theorem describes the performance of heapSort(a, c).
Theorem 11.4. The heapSort(a, c) method runs in O(n log n) time and performs at most 2n log n+
O(n) comparisons.
Proof. The algorithm runs in 3 steps: (1) Transforming a into a heap, (2) repeatedly ex-
tracting the minimum element from a, and (3) reversing the elements in a. We have just
argued that step 1 takes O(n) time and performs O(n) comparisons. Step 3 takes O(n) time
and performs no comparisons. Step 2 performs n calls to trickleDown(0). The ith such
call operates on a heap of size n−i and performs at most 2 log(n−i) comparisons. Summing
this over i gives
n−i
X n−i
X
2 log(n − i) ≤ 2 log n = 2n log n
i=0 i=0
Adding the number of comparisons performed in each of the three steps completes the
proof.
11.1.4 A Lower-Bound for Comparison-Based Sorting
We have now seen three comparison-based sorting algorithms that each run in O(n log n)
time. By now, we should be wondering if faster algorithms exist. The short answer to this
question is no. If the only operations allowed on the elements of a are comparisons then
no algorithm can avoid doing roughly n log n comparisons. This is not difficult to prove,
but requires a little imagination. Ultimately, it follows from the fact that
log(n!) = log n + log(n − 1) + · · · + log(1) = n log n − O(n) .
(Proving this fact is left as Exercise 11.11.)
We will first focus our attention on deterministic algorithms like merge-sort and
heap-sort and on a particular fixed value of n. Imagine such an algorithm is being used
to sort n distinct elements. The key to proving the lower-bound is to observe that, for a
deterministic algorithm with a fixed value of n, the first pair of elements that are com-
pared is always the same. For example, in heapSort(a, c), when n is even, the first call to
trickleDown(i) is with i = n/2 − 1 and the first comparison is between elements a[n/2 − 1]
and a[n − 1].
Since all input elements are distinct, this first comparison has only two possible
outcomes. The second comparison done by the algorithm may depend on the outcome of
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
a[0] ≶ a[1]
< >
a[1] ≶ a[2] a[0] ≶ a[2]
< > < >
a[0] < a[1] < a[2] a[0] ≶ a[2] a[1] < a[0] < a[2] a[1] ≶ a[2]
< > < >
a[0] < a[2] < a[1] a[2] < a[0] < a[1] a[1] < a[2] < a[0] a[2] < a[1] < a[0]
Figure 11.5: A comparison tree for sorting an array a[0], a[1], a[2] of length n = 3.
the first comparison. The third comparison may depend on the results of the first two, and
so on. In this way, any deterministic comparison-based sorting algorithm can be viewed
as a rooted binary comparison-tree. Each internal node, u, of this tree is labelled with a
pair of indices u.i and u.j. If a[u.i] < a[u.j] the algorithm proceeds to the left subtree,
otherwise it proceeds to the right subtree. Each leaf w of this tree is labelled with a permu-
tation w.p[0], . . . , w.p[n − 1] of 0, . . . , n − 1. This permutation represents the permutation that
is required to sort a if the comparison tree reaches this leaf. That is,
a[w.p[0]] < a[w.p[1]] < · · · < a[w.p[n − 1]] .
An example of a comparison tree for an array of size n = 3 is shown in Figure 11.5.
The comparison tree for a sorting algorithm tells us everything about the algo-
rithm. It tells us exactly the sequence of comparisons that will be performed for any input
array, a, having n distinct elements and it tells us how the algorithm will reorder a to sort
it. An immediate consequence of this is that the comparison tree must have at least n!
leaves; if not, then there are two distinct permutations that lead to the same leaf, so the
algorithm does not correctly sort at least one of these permutations.
For example, the comparison tree in Figure 11.6 has only 4 < 3! = 6 leaves. Inspect-
ing this tree, we see that the two input arrays 3, 1, 2 and 3, 2, 1 both lead to the rightmost
leaf. On the input 3, 1, 2 this leaf correctly outputs a[1] = 1, a[2] = 2, a[0] = 3. However, on
the input 3, 2, 1, this node incorrectly outputs a[1] = 2, a[2] = 1, a[0] = 3. This discussion
leads to the primary lower-bound for comparison-based algorithms.
Theorem 11.5. For any deterministic comparison-based sorting algorithm A and any integer
n ≥ 1, there exists an input array a of length n such that A performs at least log(n!) = n log n −
O(n) comparisons when sorting a.
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.1. Comparison-Based Sorting
a[0] ≶ a[1]
< >
a[1] ≶ a[2] a[0] ≶ a[2]
< > < >
a[0] < a[1] < a[2] a[0] < a[2] < a[1] a[1] < a[0] < a[2] a[1] < a[2] < a[0]
Figure 11.6: A comparison tree that does not correctly sort every input permutation.
Proof. By the above discussion, the comparison tree defined by A must have at least n!
leaves. An easy inductive proof shows that any binary tree with k leaves has height at least
log k. Therefore, the comparison tree for A has a leaf, w, of depth at least log(n!) and there
is an input array a that leads to this leaf. The input array a is an input for which A does at
least log(n!) comparisons.
Theorem 11.5 deals with deterministic algorithms like merge-sort and heap-sort,
but doesn’t tell us anything about randomized algorithms like quicksort. Could a random-
ized algorithm beat the log(n!) lower bound on the number of comparisons? The answer,
again, is no. Again, the way to prove it is to think differently about what a randomized
algorithm is.
In the following discussion, we will implicitly assume that our decision trees have
been “cleaned up” in the following way: Any node that can not be reached by some input
array a is removed. This cleaning up implies that the tree has exactly n! leaves. It has at
least n! leaves because, otherwise, it could not sort correctly. It has at most n! leaves since
each of the possible n! permutation of n distinct elements follows exactly one root to leaf
path in the decision tree.
We can think of a randomized sorting algorithm R as a deterministic algorithm
that takes two inputs: The input array a that should be sorted and a long sequence b =
b1 , b2 , b3 , . . . , bm of random real numbers in the range [0, 1]. The random numbers provide
the randomization. When the algorithm wants to toss a coin or make a random choice, it
does so by using some element from b. For example, to compute the index of the first pivot
in quicksort, the algorithm could use the formula bnb1 c.
Now, notice that if we fix b to some particular sequence b̂ then R becomes a de-
terministic sorting algorithm, R(b̂), that has an associated comparison tree, T (b̂). Next,
notice that if we select a to be a random permutation of {1, . . . , n}, then this is equivalent to
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.2. Counting Sort and Radix Sort
selecting a random leaf, w, from the n! leaves of T (b̂).
Exercise 11.13 asks you to prove that, if we select a random leaf from any binary
tree with k leaves, then the expected depth of that leaf is at least log k. Therefore, the
expected number of comparisons performed by the (deterministic) algorithm R(b̂) when
given an input array containing a random permutation of {1, . . . , n} is at least log(n!). Fi-
nally, notice that this is true for every choice of b̂, therefore it holds even for R. This
completes the proof of the lower-bound for randomized algorithms.
Theorem 11.6. For any (deterministic or randomized) comparison-based sorting algorithm A
and any integer n ≥ 1, the expected number of comparisons done by A when sorting a random
permutation of {1, . . . , n} is at least log(n!) = n log n − O(n).
11.2 Counting Sort and Radix Sort
In this section we consider two sorting algorithms that are not comparison-based. These
algorithms are specialized for sorting small integers. These algorithms get around the
lower-bounds of Theorem 11.5 by using (parts of) the elements of a as indices into an
array. Consider a statement of the form
c[a[i]] = 1 .
This statement executes in constant time, but has c.length possible different outcomes,
depending on the value of a[i]. This means that the execution of an algorithm that makes
such a statement can not be modelled as a binary tree. Ultimately, this is the reason that
the algorithms in this section are able to sort faster than comparison-based algorithms.
11.2.1 Counting Sort
Suppose we have an input array a consisting of n integers, each in the range 0, . . . , k−1. The
counting-sort algorithm sorts a using an auxiliary array c of counters. It outputs a sorted
version of a as an auxiliary array b.
The idea behind counting-sort is simple: For each i ∈ {0, . . . , k−1}, count the number
of occurrences of i in a and store this in c[i]. Now, after sorting, the output will look like
c[0] occurrences of 0, followed by c[1] occurrences of 1, followed by c[2] occurrences of
2,. . . , followed by c[k − 1] occurrences of k − 1. The code that does this is very slick, and its
execution is illustrated in Figure 11.7:
Algorithms
int[] countingSort(int[] a, int k) {
int c[] = new int[k];
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.2. Counting Sort and Radix Sort
a 7 2 9 0 1 2 0 9 7 4 4 6 9 1 0 9 3 2 5 9
c 3 2 3 1 2 1 1 2 0 5
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
c0 3 5 8 9 11 12 13 15 15 20
b 0 0 0 1 1 2 2 2 3 4 4 5 6 7 7 9 9 9 9 9
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 8
7 9
c0 3 5 8 9 11 12 13 15 20
a 7 2 9 0 1 2 0 9 7 4 4 6 9 1 0 9 3 2 5 9
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19
Figure 11.7: The operation of counting sort on an array of length n = 20 that stores integers
0, . . . , k − 1 = 9.
for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++)
c[a[i]]++;
for (int i = 1; i < k; i++)
c[i] += c[i-1];
int b[] = new int[a.length];
for (int i = a.length-1; i >= 0; i--)
b[--c[a[i]]] = a[i];
return b;
}
The first for loop in this code sets each counter c[i] so that it counts the number
of occurrences of i in a. By using the values of a as indices, these counters can all be
computed in O(n) time with a single for loop. At this point, we could use c to fill in the
output array b directly. However, this would not work if the elements of a have associated
data. Therefore we spend a little extra effort to copy the elements of a into b.
The next for loop, which takes O(k) time, computes a running-sum of the counters
so that c[i] becomes the number of elements in a that are less than or equal to i. In
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.2. Counting Sort and Radix Sort
particular, for every i ∈ {0, . . . , k − 1}, the output array, b, will have
b[c[i − 1]] = b[c[i − 1] + 1] = · · · = b[c[i] − 1] = i .
Finally, the algorithm scans a backwards to put its elements in order into an output array
b. When scanning, the element a[i] = j is placed at location b[c[j] − 1] and the value c[j]
is decremented.
Theorem 11.7. The countingSort(a, k) method can sort an array a containing n integers in
the set {0, . . . , k − 1} in O(n + k) time.
The counting-sort algorithm has the nice property of being stable; it preserves the
relative order of elements that are equal. If two elements a[i] and a[j] have the same value,
and i < j then a[i] will appear before a[j] in b. This will be useful in the next section.
11.2.2 Radix-Sort
Counting-sort is very efficient for sorting an array of integers when the length, n, of the
array is not much smaller than the maximum value, k − 1, that appears in the array. The
radix-sort algorithm, which we now describe, uses several passes of counting-sort to allow
for a much greater range of maximum values.
Radix-sort sorts w-bit integers by using w/d passes of counting-sort to sort these
integers d bits at a time.2 More precisely, radix sort first sorts the integers by their least
significant d bits, then their next significant d bits, and so on until, in the last pass, the
integers are sorted by their most significant d bits.
Algorithms
int[] radixSort(int[] a) {
int[] b = null;
for (int p = 0; p < w/d; p++) {
int c[] = new int[1<<d];
// the next three for loops implement counting-sort
b = new int[a.length];
for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++)
c[(a[i] >> d*p)&((1<<d)-1)]++;
for (int i = 1; i < 1<<d; i++)
c[i] += c[i-1];
for (int i = a.length-1; i >= 0; i--)
b[--c[(a[i] >> d*p)&((1<<d)-1)]] = a[i];
a = b;
}
2 We assume that d divides w, otherwise we can always increase w to ddw/de.
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.3. Discussion and Exercises
01010001 11001000 11110000 00000001 00000001
00000001 00101000 01010001 11001000 00001111
11001000 11110000 00000001 00001111 00101000
00101000 01010001 01010101 01010001 01010001
00001111 00000001 11001000 01010101 01010101
11110000 01010101 00101000 00101000 10101010
10101010 10101010 10101010 10101010 11001000
01010101 00001111 00001111 11110000 11110000
Figure 11.8: Using radixsort to sort w = 8-bit integers by using 4 passes of counting sort on
d = 2-bit integers.
return b;
}
(In this code, the expression (a[i]>>d ∗ p)&((1<<d) − 1) extracts the integer whose binary
representation is given by bits (p + 1)d − 1, . . . , pd of a[i].) An example of the steps of this
algorithm is shown in Figure 11.8.
This remarkable algorithm sorts correctly because counting-sort is a stable sorting
algorithm. If x < y are two elements of a and the most significant bit at which x differs
from y has index r, then x will be placed before y during pass br/dc and subsequent passes
will not change the relative order of x and y.
Radix-sort performs w/d passes of counting-sort. Each pass requires O(n + 2d ) time.
Therefore, the performance of radix-sort is given by the following theorem.
Theorem 11.8. For any integer d > 0, the radixSort(a, k) method can sort an array a contain-
ing n w-bit integers in O((w/d)(n + 2d )) time.
If we think, instead, of the elements of the array being in the range {0, . . . , nc − 1},
and take d = dlog ne we obtain the following version of Theorem 11.8.
Corollary 11.1. The radixSort(a, k) method can sort an array a containing n integer values
in the range {0, . . . , nc − 1} in O(cn) time.
11.3 Discussion and Exercises
Sorting is probably the fundamental algorithmic problem in computer science, and has
a long history. Knuth [48] attributes the merge-sort algorithm to von Neumann (1945).
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.3. Discussion and Exercises
Quicksort is due to Hoare [39]. The original heap-sort algorithm is due to Williams [76],
but the version presented here (in which the heap is constructed bottom-up in O(n) time)
is due to Floyd [28]. Lower-bounds for comparison-based sorting appear to be folklore.
The following table summarizes the performance of these comparison-based algorithms:
comparisons in-place
Merge-sort n log n worst-case No
Quicksort 1.38n log n + O(n) expected Yes
Heap-sort 2n log n + O(n) worst-case Yes
Each of these comparison-based algorithms has advantages and disadvantages.
Merge-sort does the fewest comparisons and does not rely on randomization. Unfortu-
nately, it uses an auxilliary array during its merge phase. Allocating this array can be
expensive and is a potential point of failure if memory is limited. Quicksort is an in-place
algorithm and is a close second in terms of the number of comparisons, but is randomized
so this running time is not always guaranteed. Heap-sort does the most comparisons, but
it is in-place and deterministic.
There is one setting in which merge-sort is a clear-winner; this occurs when sorting
a linked-list. In this case, the auxiliary array is not needed; two sorted linked lists are very
easily merged into a single sorted linked-list by pointer manipulations (see Exercise 11.2).
The counting-sort and radix-sort algorithms described here are due to Seward [68,
Section 2.4.6]. However, variants of radix-sort have been used since the 1920’s to sort
punch cards using punched card sorting machines. These machines can sort a stack of
cards into two piles based on the existence (or not) of a hole in a specific location on the
card. Repeating this process for different hole locations gives an implementation of radix-
sort.
Finally, we note that counting sort and radix-sort can be used to sort other types of
numbers than non-negative integers. Straightforward modifications of counting sort can
sort integers, from any interval {a, . . . , b} in O(n + b − a) time. Similarly, radix sort can sort
these integers in O(n(logn (b − a)) time. Finally, both these algorithms can also be used to
sort floating point numbers in the IEEE 754 floating point format. This is because the IEEE
format was designed to allow comparison of two floating point numbers by comparing
their values as if they were integers in a signed-magnitude binary representation [2].
Exercise 11.1. Illustrate the execution of merge-sort and heap-sort on an input array con-
taining 1, 7, 4, 6, 2, 8, 3, 5. Give a sample illustration of one possible execution of quicksort
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11. Sorting Algorithms 11.3. Discussion and Exercises
on the same array.
Exercise 11.2. Implement a version of the merge-sort algorithm that sorts a DLList with-
out using an auxiliary array. (See Exercise 3.13.)
Exercise 11.3. Some implementations of quickSort(a, i, n, c) always use a[i] as a pivot.
Given an example of an input array of length n in which such an implementation would
perform 2n comparisons.
Exercise 11.4. Some implementations of quickSort(a, i, n, c) always use a[i + n/2] as a
pivot. Given an example of an input array of length n in which such an implementation
would perform 2n comparisons.
Exercise 11.5. Show that, for any implementation of quickSort(a, i, n, c) that chooses a
pivot deterministically, without looking at a[i], . . . , a[i + n − 1], there exists an input array
of length n that causes this implementation to perform 2n comparisons.
Exercise 11.6. Design a Comparator, c, that you could pass as an argument to quickSort(a, i, n, c)
and that would cause quicksort to perform 2n comparisons. (Hint: Your comparator does
not actually need to look at the values being compared.)
Exercise 11.7. Analyze the expected number of comparisons done by Quicksort a little
more carefully than the proof of Theorem 11.3. In particular, show that the expected
number of comparisons is 2nHn − n + Hn .
Exercise 11.8. Describe an input array that causes heap sort to perform at least 2n log n −
O(n) comparisons. Justify your answer.
Exercise 11.9. The heap sort implementation described here sorts the elements into re-
verse sorted order and then reverses the array. This last step could be avoided by defining
a new Comparator that negates the results of the input Comparator, c. Explain why this
would not be a good optimization. (Hint: Consider how many negations would needed to
be done in relation to how long it takes to reverse the array.)
Exercise 11.10. Find another pair of permutations of 1, 2, 3 that are not correctly sorted by
the comparison-tree in Figure 11.6.
Exercise 11.11. Prove that log n! = n log n − O(n).
Exercise 11.12. Prove that a binary tree with k leaves has height at least log k.
216
11. Sorting Algorithms 11.3. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 11.13. Prove that, if we pick a random leaf from a binary tree with k leaves, then
the expected height of this leaf is at least log k.
Exercise 11.14. The implementation of radixSort(a, k) given here works when the input
array, a contains only non-negative integers. Extend this implementation so that it also
works correctly when a contains both negative and non-negative integers.
217
11. Sorting Algorithms 11.3. Discussion and Exercises
218
Chapter 12
Graphs
In this chapter, we study two representations of graphs and basic algorithms on these
representations.
Mathematically, a (directed) graph is a pair G = (V , E) where V is a set of vertices and
E is a set of ordered pairs of vertices called edges. An edge (i, j) is directed from i to j; i is
called the source of the edge and j is called the target. A path in G is a sequence of vertices
v0 , . . . , vk such that, for every i ∈ {1, . . . , k}, the edge (vi−1 , vi ) is in E. A path v0 , . . . , vk is a
cycle if, additionally, the edge (vk , v0 ) is in E. A path (or cycle) is simple if all of its vertices
are unique. If there is a path from some vertex vi to some vertex vj then we say that vj is
reachable from vi . An example of a graph is shown in Figure 12.1.
Graphs have an enormous number of applications, due to their ability to model so
many phenomena. There are many obvious examples. Computer networks can be mod-
elled as graphs, with vertices corresponding to computers and edges corresponding to (di-
rected) communication links between those computers. Street networks can be modelled
as graphs, with vertices representing intersections and edges representing streets joining
consecutive intersections.
Less obvious examples occur as soon as we realize that graphs can model any pair-
wise relationships within a set. For example, in a university setting we might have a
timetable conflict graph whose vertices represent courses offered in the university and
in which the edge (i, j) is present if and only if there is at least one student that is tak-
ing both class i and class j. Thus, an edge indicates that the exam for class i can not be
scheduled at the same time as the exam for class j.
Throughout this section, we will use n to denote the number of vertices of G and
m to denote the number of edges of G. That is, n = |V | and m = |E|. Furthermore, we will
assume that V = {0, . . . , n − 1}. Any other data that we would like to associate with the
219
12. Graphs
0 1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11
Figure 12.1: A graph with 12 vertices. Vertices are drawn as numbered circles and edges
are drawn as pointed curves pointing from source to target.
elements of V can be stored in an array of length n.
Some typical operations performed on graphs are:
• addEdge(i, j): Add the edge (i, j) to E.
• removeEdge(i, j): Remove the edge (i, j) from E.
• hasEdge(i, j): Check if the edge (i, j) ∈ E
• outEdges(i): Return a List of all integers j such that (i, j) ∈ E
• inEdges(i): Return a List of all integers j such that (j, i) ∈ E
Note that these operations are not terribly difficult to implement efficiently. For ex-
ample, the first three operations can be implemented directly by using a USet, so they can
be implemented in constant expected time using the hash tables discussed in Chapter 5.
The last two operations can be implemented in constant time by storing, for each vertex, a
list of its adjacent vertices.
However, different applications of graphs have different performance requirements
for these operations and, ideally, we can use the simplest implementation that satisfies all
the application’s requirements. For this reason, we discuss two broad categories of graph
representations.
220
12. Graphs 12.1. AdjacencyMatrix: Representing a Graph by a Matrix
12.1 AdjacencyMatrix: Representing a Graph by a Matrix
An adjacency matrix is a way of representing an n vertex graph G = (V , E) by an n×n matrix,
a, whose entries are boolean values.
AdjacencyMatrix
int n;
boolean[][] a;
AdjacencyMatrix(int n0) {
n = n0;
a = new boolean[n][n];
}
The matrix entry a[i][j] is defined as
true
if (i, j) ∈ E
a[i][j] =
false otherwise
The adjacency matrix for the graph in Figure 12.1 is shown in Figure 12.2.
With this representation, the addEdge(i, j), removeEdge(i, j), and hasEdge(i, j) op-
erations just involve setting or reading the matrix entry a[i][j]:
AdjacencyMatrix
void addEdge(int i, int j) {
a[i][j] = true;
}
void removeEdge(int i, int j) {
a[i][j] = false;
}
boolean hasEdge(int i, int j) {
return a[i][j];
}
These operations clearly take constant time per operation.
Where the adjacency matrix performs poorly is with the outEdges(i) and inEdges(i)
operations. To implement these, we must scan all n entries in the corresponding row or
column of a and gather up all the indices, j, where a[i][j], respectively a[j][i], is true.
AdjacencyMatrix
List<Integer> outEdges(int i) {
List<Integer> edges = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++)
if (a[i][j]) edges.add(j);
return edges;
}
221
12. Graphs 12.1. AdjacencyMatrix: Representing a Graph by a Matrix
0 1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0
1 1 0 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 0
2 1 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 0
3 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0
4 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0
5 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0 0
6 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0 0 1 0
7 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1
8 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 0
9 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1 0
10 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0 1
11 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 1 0 0 1 0
Figure 12.2: A graph and its adjacency matrix.
222
12. Graphs 12.1. AdjacencyMatrix: Representing a Graph by a Matrix
List<Integer> inEdges(int i) {
List<Integer> edges = new ArrayList<Integer>();
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++)
if (a[j][i]) edges.add(j);
return edges;
}
These operations clearly take O(n) time per operation.
Another drawback of the adjacency matrix representation is that it is big. It stores
an n × n boolean matrix, so it requires at least n2 bits of memory. The implementation here
uses a matrix of boolean values so it actually uses on the order of n2 bytes of memory.
A more careful implementation, that packs w boolean values into each word of memory
could reduce this space usage to O(n2 /w) words of memory.
Theorem 12.1. The AdjacencyMatrix data structure implements the Graph interface. An
AdjacencyMatrix supports the operations
• addEdge(i, j), removeEdge(i, j), and hasEdge(i, j) in constant time per operation; and
• inEdges(i), and outEdges(i) in O(n) time per operation.
The space used by an AdjacencyMatrix is O(n2 ).
Despite the high memory usage and poor performance of the inEdges(i) and outEdges(i)
operations, an AdjacencyMatrix can still be useful for some applications. In particular,
when the graph G is dense, i.e., it has close to n2 edges, then a memory usage of n2 may be
acceptable.
The AdjacencyMatrix data structure is also commonly used because algebraic op-
erations on the matrix a can be used to efficiently compute properties of the graph G.
This is a topic for a course on algorithms, but we point out one such property here: If we
treat the entries of a as integers (1 for true and 0 for false) and multiply a by itself us-
ing matrix multiplication then we get the matrix a2 . Recall, from the definition of matrix
multiplication, that
n−1
X
a2 [i][j] = a[i][k] · a[k][j] .
k=0
Interpreting this sum in terms of the graph G, this formula counts the number of vertices,
k, such that G contains both edges (i, k) and (k, j). That is, it counts the number of paths
from i to j (through intermediate vertices, k) that have length exactly 2. This observation
223
12. Graphs 12.2. AdjacencyLists: A Graph as a Collection of Lists
is the foundation of an algorithm that computes the shortest paths between all pairs of
vertices in G using only O(log n) matrix multiplications.
12.2 AdjacencyLists: A Graph as a Collection of Lists
Adjacency list representations takes a more vertex-centric approach. There are many differ-
ent possible implementations of adjacency lists. In this section, we present a simple one.
At the end of the section, we discuss different possibilities. In an adjacency list represen-
tation, the graph G = (V , E) is represented as an array, adj, of lists. The list adj[i] contains
a list of all the vertices adjacent to vertex i. That is, it contains every index j such that
(i, j) ∈ E.
AdjacencyLists
int n;
List<Integer>[] adj;
AdjacencyLists(int n0) {
n = n0;
adj = (List<Integer>[])new List[n];
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
adj[i] = new ArrayStack<Integer>(Integer.class);
}
(An example is shown in Figure 12.3.) In this particular implementation, we represent
each list in adj as an ArrayStack, because we would like constant time access by position.
Other options are also possible. Specifically, we could have implemented adj as a DLList.
The addEdge(i, j) operation just appends the value j to the list adj[i]:
AdjacencyLists
void addEdge(int i, int j) {
adj[i].add(j);
}
This takes constant time.
The removeEdge(i, j) operation searches through the list adj[i] until it finds j and
then removes it:
AdjacencyLists
void removeEdge(int i, int j) {
Iterator<Integer> it = adj[i].iterator();
while (it.hasNext()) {
if (it.next() == j) {
it.remove();
return;
}
224
12. Graphs 12.2. AdjacencyLists: A Graph as a Collection of Lists
0 1 2 3
4 5 6 7
8 9 10 11
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11
1 0 1 2 0 1 5 6 4 8 9 10
4 2 3 7 5 2 2 3 9 5 6 7
6 6 8 6 7 11 10 11
5 9 10
4
Figure 12.3: A graph and its adjacency lists
}
}
This takes O(deg(i)) time, where deg(i) (the degree of i) counts the number of edges in E
that have i as their source.
The hasEdge(i, j) operation is similar; it searches through the list adj[i] until it
finds j (and returns true), or reaches the end of the list (and returns false):
AdjacencyLists
boolean hasEdge(int i, int j) {
return adj[i].contains(j);
}
This also takes O(deg(i)) time.
The outEdges(i) operation is very simple; It simply returns the list adj[i]:
AdjacencyLists
List<Integer> outEdges(int i) {
return adj[i];
}
225
12. Graphs 12.2. AdjacencyLists: A Graph as a Collection of Lists
This clearly takes constant time.
The inEdges(i) operation is much more work. It scans over every vertex j checking
if the edge (i, j) exists and, if so, adding j to the output list:
AdjacencyLists
List<Integer> inEdges(int i) {
List<Integer> edges = new ArrayStack<Integer>(Integer.class);
for (int j = 0; j < n; j++)
if (adj[j].contains(i)) edges.add(j);
return edges;
}
This operation is very slow. It scans the adjacency list of every vertex, so it takes O(n + m)
time.
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the above data structure:
Theorem 12.2. The AdjacencyLists data structure implements the Graph interface. An Ad-
jacencyLists supports the operations
• addEdge(i, j) in constant time per operation;
• removeEdge(i, j) and hasEdge(i, j) in O(deg(i)) time per operation;
• outEdges(i) in constant time per operation; and
• inEdges(i) in O(n + m) time per operation.
The space used by a AdjacencyLists is O(n + m).
As alluded to earlier, there are many different choices to be made when implement-
ing a graph as an adjacency list. Some questions that come up include:
• What type of collection should be used to store each element of adj? One could use
an array-based list, a linked-list, or even a hashtable.
• Should there be a second adjacency list, inadj, that stores, for each i, the list of
vertices, j, such that (j, i) ∈ E? This can greatly reduce the running-time of the
inEdges(i) operation, but requires slightly more work when adding or removing
edges.
• Should the entry for the edge (i, j) in adj[i] be linked by a reference to the corre-
sponding entry in inadj[j]?
226
12. Graphs 12.3. Graph Traversal
• Should edges be first-class objects with their own associated data? In this way, adj
would contain lists of edges rather than lists of vertices (integers).
Most of these questions come down to a tradeoff between complexity (and space) of im-
plementation and performance features of the implementation.
12.3 Graph Traversal
In this section we present two algorithms for exploring a graph, starting at one of its ver-
tices, i, and finding all vertices that are reachable from i. Both of these algorithms are
best suited to graphs represented using an adjacency list representation. Therefore, when
analyzing these algorithms we will assume that the underlying representation is as an Ad-
jacencyLists.
12.3.1 Breadth-First Search
The bread-first-search algorithm starts at a vertex i and visits, first the neighbours of i,
then the neighbours of the neighbours of i, then the neighbours of the neighbours of the
neighbours of i, and so on.
This algorithm is a generalization of the breadth-first-search algorithm for binary
trees (Section 6.1.2), and is very similar; it uses a queue, q, that initially contains only i.
It then repeatedly extracts an element from q and adds its neighbours to q, provided that
these neighbours have never been in q before. The only major difference between breadth-
first-search for graphs and for trees is that the algorithm for graphs has to ensure that
it does not add the same vertex to q more than once. It does this by using an auxiliary
boolean array, seen, that keeps track of which vertices have already been discovered.
Algorithms
void bfs(Graph g, int r) {
boolean[] seen = new boolean[g.nVertices()];
Queue<Integer> q = new SLList<Integer>();
q.add(r);
seen[r] = true;
while (!q.isEmpty()) {
int i = q.remove();
for (Integer j : g.outEdges(i)) {
if (!seen[j]) {
q.add(j);
seen[j] = true;
}
}
}
227
12. Graphs 12.3. Graph Traversal
0 1 3 7
2 5 4 8
6 10 9 11
Figure 12.4: An example of bread-first-search starting at node 0. Nodes are labelled with
the order in which they are added to q. Edges that result in nodes being added to q are
drawn in black, other edges are drawn in grey.
}
An example of running bfs(g, 0) on the graph from Figure 12.1 is shown in Figure 12.4.
Different executions are possible, depending on the ordering of the adjacency lists; Fig-
ure 12.4 uses the adjacency lists in Figure 12.3.
Analyzing the running-time of the bfs(g, i) routine is fairly straightforward. The
use of the seen array ensures that no vertex is added to q more than once. Adding (and
later removing) each vertex from q takes constant time per vertex for a total of O(n) time.
Since each vertex is processed at most once by the inner loop, each adjacency list is pro-
cessed at most once, so each edge of G is processed at most once. This processing, which is
done in the inner loop takes constant time per iteration, for a total of O(m) time. Therefore,
the entire algorithm runs in O(n + m) time.
The following theorem summarizes the performance of the bfs(g, r) algorithm.
Theorem 12.3. When given as input a Graph, g, that is implemented using the Adjacen-
cyLists data structure, the bfs(g, r) algorithm runs in O(n + m) time.
A breadth-first traversal has some very special properties. Calling bfs(g, r) will
eventually enqueue (and eventually dequeue) every vertex j such that there is a directed
path from r to j. Moreover, the vertices at distance 0 from r (r itself) will enter q before the
vertices at distance 1, which will enter q before the vertices at distance 2, and so on. Thus,
the bfs(g, r) method visits vertices in increasing order of distance from r and vertices that
228
12. Graphs 12.3. Graph Traversal
can not be reached from r are never output at all.
A particularly useful application of the breadth-first-search algorithm is, therefore,
in computing shortest paths. To compute the shortest path from r to every other vertex,
we use a variant of bfs(g, r) that uses an auxilliary array, p, of length n. When a new vertex
j is added to q, we set p[j] = i. In this way, p[j] becomes the second last node on a shortest
path from r to j. Repeating this, by taking p[p[j], p[p[p[j]]], and so on we can reconstruct
the (reversal of) a shortest path from r to j.
12.3.2 Depth-First Search
The depth-first-search algorithm is similar to the standard algorithm for traversing binary
trees; it first fully explores one subtree before returning to the current node and then
exploring the other subtree. Another way to think of depth-first-search is by saying that it
is similar to breadth-first search except that it uses a stack instead of a queue.
During the execution of the depth-first-search algorithm, each vertex, i, is assigned
a color, c[i]: white if we have never seen the vertex before, grey if we are currently visiting
that vertex, and black if we are done visiting that vertex. The easiest way to think of depth-
first-search is as a recursive algorithm. It starts by visiting r. When visiting a vertex i, we
first mark i as grey. Next, we scan i’s adjacency list and recursively visit any white vertex
we find in this list. Finally, we are done processing i, so we color i black and return.
Algorithms
void dfs(Graph g, int r) {
byte[] c = new byte[g.nVertices()];
dfs(g, r, c);
}
void dfs(Graph g, int i, byte[] c) {
c[i] = grey; // currently visiting i
for (Integer j : g.outEdges(i)) {
if (c[j] == white) {
c[j] = grey;
dfs(g, j, c);
}
}
c[i] = black; // done visiting i
}
An example of the execution of this algorithm is shown in Figure 12.5
Although depth-first-search may best be thought of as a recursive algorithm, recur-
sion is not the best way to implement it. Indeed, the code given above will fail for many
229
12. Graphs 12.3. Graph Traversal
0 1 2 3
9 10 11 4
8 7 6 5
Figure 12.5: An example of depth-first-search starting at node 0. Nodes are labelled with
the order in which they are processed. Edges that result in a recursive call are drawn in
black, other edges are drawn in grey.
large graphs by causing a stack overflow. An alternative implementation is to replace the
recursion stack with an explicit stack, s. The following implementation does just that:
Algorithms
void dfs2(Graph g, int r) {
byte[] c = new byte[g.nVertices()];
Stack<Integer> s = new Stack<Integer>();
s.push(r);
while (!s.isEmpty()) {
int i = s.pop();
if (c[i] == white) {
c[i] = grey;
for (int j : g.outEdges(i))
s.push(j);
}
}
}
In the above code, when next vertex, i, is processed, i is colored grey and then replaced,
on the stack, with its adjacent vertices. During the next iteration, one of these vertices will
be visited.
Not surprisingly, the running times of dfs(g, r) and dfs2(g, r) are the same as that
of bfs(g, r):
Theorem 12.4. When given as input a Graph, g, that is implemented using the Adjacen-
cyLists data structure, the dfs(g, r) and dfs2(g, r) algorithms each run in O(n + m) time.
230
12. Graphs 12.4. Discussion and Exercises
P
j i
C
Figure 12.6: The depth-first-search algorithm can be used to detect cycles in G.The node
j is colored grey while i is still grey. This implies there is a path, P , from i to j in the
depth-first-search tree, and the edge (j, i) implies that P is also a cycle.
As with the breadth-first-search algorithm, there is an underlying tree associated
with each execution of depth-first-search. When a node i , r goes from white to grey, this
is because dfs(g, i, c) was called recursively while processing some node i0 . (In the case of
dfs2(g, r) algorithm, i is one of the nodes that replaced i0 on the stack.) If we think of i0
as the parent of i, then we obtain a tree rooted at r. In Figure 12.5, this tree is a path from
vertex 0 to vertex 11.
An important property of the depth-first-search algorithm is the following: Sup-
pose that when node i is colored grey, there exists a path from i to some other node j that
uses only white vertices. Then j will be colored (first grey then) black before i is colored
black. (This can be proven by contradiction, by considering any path P from i to j.)
One application of this property is the detection of cycles. Refer to Figure 12.6.
Consider some cycle, C, that can be reached from r. Let i be the first node of C that is
colored grey, and let j be the node that precedes i on the cycle C. Then, by the above
property, j will be colored grey and the edge (j, i) will be considered by the algorithm
while i is still grey. Thus, the algorithm can conclude that there is a path, P , from i to j
in the depth-first-search tree and the edge (j, i) exists. Therefore, P is also a cycle.
12.4 Discussion and Exercises
The running times of the depth-first-search and breadth-first-search algorithms are some-
what overstated by the Theorems 12.3 and 12.4. Define nr as the number of vertices, i, of
G, for which there exists a path from r to i. Define mr as the number of edges that have
these vertices as their sources. Then the following theorem is a more precise statement
of the running times of the breadth-first-search and depth-first-search algorithms. (This
more refined statement of the running time is useful in some of the applications of these
algorithms outlined in the exercises.)
231
12. Graphs 12.4. Discussion and Exercises
5
9
0
4
1 6
3
2
8
7
Figure 12.7: An example graph.
Theorem 12.5. When given as input a Graph, g, that is implemented using the Adjacen-
cyLists data structure, the bfs(g, r), dfs(g, r) and dfs2(g, r) algorithms each run in O(nr +mr )
time.
Breadth-first search seems to have been discovered independently by Moore [52]
and Lee [49] in the contexts of maze exploration and circuit routing, respectively.
Adjacency-list representations of graphs were first popularized by Hopcroft and
Tarjan [40] as an alternative to the (then more common) adjacency-matrix representa-
tion. This representation, and depth-first-search, played a major part in the celebrated
Hopcroft-Tarjan planarity testing algorithm that can determine, in O(n) time, if a graph
can be drawn, in the plane, and in such a way that no pair of edges cross each other [41].
In the following exercises, an undirected graph is one in which, for every i and j,
the edge (i, j) is present if and only if the edge (j, i) is present.
Exercise 12.1. Draw an adjacencly list representation and an adjacency matrix represen-
tation of the graph in Figure 12.7.
Exercise 12.2. The incidence matrix representation of a graph, G, is an n × m matrix, A,
where
−1 if vertex i the source of edge j
Ai,j =
+1 if vertex i the target of edge j
0 otherwise.
1. Draw the incident matrix representation of the graph in Figure 12.7.
232
12. Graphs 12.4. Discussion and Exercises
2. Design, analyze and implement an incidence matrix representation of a graph. Be
sure to analyze the space, the cost of addEdge(i, j), removeEdge(i, j), hasEdge(i, j),
inEdges(i), and outEdges(i).
Exercise 12.3. Illustrate an execution of the bfs(G, 0) and dfs(G, 0) on the graph, G, in
Figure 12.7.
Exercise 12.4. Let G be an undirected graph. We say G is connected if, for every pair of
vertices i and j in G, there is a path from i to j (since G is undirected, there is also a path
from j to i). Show how to test if G is connected in O(n + m) time.
Exercise 12.5. Let G be an undirected graph. A connected-component labelling of G parti-
tions the vertices of G into maximal sets, each of which forms a connected subgraph. Show
how to compute a connected component labelling of G in O(n + m) time.
Exercise 12.6. Let G be an undirected graph. A spanning forest of G is a collection of trees,
one per component, whose edges are edges of G and whose vertices contain all vertices of
G. Show how to compute a spanning forest of of G in O(n + m) time.
Exercise 12.7. We say that a graph G is strongly-connected if, for every pair of vertices i
and j in G, there is a path from i to j. Show how to test if G is strongly-connected in
O(n + m) time.
Exercise 12.8. Given a graph G = (V , E) and some special vertex r ∈ V , show how to
compute the length of the shortest path from r to i for every vertex i ∈ V .
Exercise 12.9. Give a (simple) example where the dfs(g, r) code visits the nodes of a graph
in an order that is different from that of the dfs2(g, r) code. Write a version of dfs2(g, r)
that always visits nodes in exactly the same order as dfs(g, r). (Hint: Just start tracing the
execution of each algorithm on some graph where r is the source of more than 1 edge.)
Exercise 12.10. A universal sink in a graph G is a vertex that is the target of n − 1 edges
and the source of no edges.1 Design and implement an algorithm that tests if a graph G,
represented as an AdjacencyMatrix, has a universal sink. Your algorithm should run in
O(n) time.
1 A universal sink, v, is also sometimes called a celebrity: Everyone in the room recognizes v, but v doesn’t
recognize anyone else in the room.
233
12. Graphs 12.4. Discussion and Exercises
234
Chapter 13
Data Structures for Integers
In this chapter, we return to the problem of implementing an SSet. The difference now
is that we assume the elements stored in the SSet are w-bit integers. That is, we want to
implement add(x), remove(x), and find(x) where x ∈ {0, . . . , 2w − 1}. It is not too hard to
think of plenty of applications where the data—or at least the key that we use for sorting
the data—is an integer.
We will discuss three data structures, each building on the ideas of the previous.
The first structure, the BinaryTrie performs all three SSet operations in O(w) time. This
is not very impressive, since any subset of {0, . . . , 2w − 1} has size n ≤ 2w , so that log n ≤ w. All
the other SSet implementations discussed in this book perform all operations in O(log n)
time so they are all at least as fast as a BinaryTrie.
The second structure, the XFastTrie, speeds up the search in a BinaryTrie by
using hashing. With this speedup, the find(x) operation runs in O(log w) time. However,
add(x) and remove(x) operations in an XFastTrie still take O(w) time and the space used
by an XFastTrie is O(n · w).
The third data structure, the YFastTrie, uses an XFastTrie to store only a sample
of roughly one out of every w elements and stores the remaining elements a standard SSet
structure. This trick reduces the running time of add(x) and remove(x) to O(log w) and
decreases the space to O(n).
The implementations used as examples in this chapter can store any type of data, as
long an integer can be associated with it. In the code samples, the variable ix is always the
integer value associated with x, and the method in.intValue(x) converts x to its associated
integer. In the text, however, we will simply treat x as if it is an integer.
235
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.1. BinaryTrie: A digital search tree
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Figure 13.1: The integers stored in a binary trie are encoded as root-to-leaf paths.
13.1 BinaryTrie: A digital search tree
A BinaryTrie encode a set of w bit integers in a binary tree. All leaves in the tree have
depth w and each integer is encoded as a root-to-leaf path. The path for the integer x turns
left at level i if the ith most significant bit of x is a 0 and turns right if it is a 1. Figure 13.1
shows an example for the case w = 4, in which the trie stores the integers 3(0011), 9(1001),
12(1100), and 13(1101).
Because the search path for a value x depends on the bits of x it will be helpful
to name the children of a node, u, u.child[0] (left) and u.child[1] (right). These child
pointers will actually serve double-duty. Since the leaves in a binary trie have no children,
the pointers are used to string the leaves together into a doubly-linked list. For a leaf in
the binary trie u.child[0] (prev) is the node that comes before u in the list and u.child[1]
(next) is the node that follows u in the list. A special node, dummy, is used both before the
first node and after the last node in the list (see Section 3.2).
Each node, u, also contains an additional pointer u.jump. If u’s left child is missing,
then u.jump points to the smallest leaf in u’s subtree. If u’s right child is missing, then
u.jump points to the largest leaf in u’s subtree. An example of a BinaryTrie, showing jump
pointers and the doubly-linked list at the leaves, is shown in Figure 13.2
The find(x) operation in a BinaryTrie is fairly straightforward. We try to follow
the search path for x in the trie. If we reach a leaf, then we have found x. If, we reach a node
u where we cannot proceed (because u is missing a child) then we follow u.jump, which
takes us either to smallest leaf larger than x or the largest leaf smaller than x. Which of
236
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.1. BinaryTrie: A digital search tree
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Figure 13.2: A BinaryTrie with jump pointers shown as curved dashed edges.
these two cases occurs depends on whether u is missing its left or right child, respectively.
In the former case (u is missing its left child), we have found the value we are looking for.
In the latter case (u is missing its right child), we can use the linked list to reach the value
we are looking for. Each of these cases is illustrated in Figure 13.3.
BinaryTrie
T find(T x) {
int i, c = 0, ix = it.intValue(x);
Node u = r;
for (i = 0; i < w; i++) {
c = (ix >>> w-i-1) & 1;
if (u.child[c] == null) break;
u = u.child[c];
}
if (i == w) return u.x; // found it
u = (c == 0) ? u.jump : u.jump.child[next];
return u == dummy ? null : u.x;
}
The running-time of the find(x) method is dominated by the time it takes to follow a
root-to-leaf path, so it runs in O(w) time.
The add(x) operation in a BinaryTrie is fairly straightforward, but it has a lot of
things to take care of:
1. It follows the search path for x until reaching a node u where it can no longer pro-
ceed.
2. It creates the remainder of the search path from u to a leaf that contains x.
237
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.1. BinaryTrie: A digital search tree
????
find(5) 0? ? ? 1? ? ? find(8)
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Figure 13.3: The paths followed by find(5) and find(8).
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Figure 13.4: Adding the values 2 and 15 to the BinaryTrie in Figure 13.2.
3. It adds the node, u0 , containing x to the linked list of leaves (it has access to u0 ’s prede-
cessor, pred, in the linked list from the jump pointer of the last node, u, encountered
during step 1.)
4. It walks back up the search path for x adjusting jump pointers at the nodes whose
jump pointer should now point to x.
An addition is illustrated in Figure 13.4.
BinaryTrie
boolean add(T x) {
int i, c = 0, ix = it.intValue(x);
Node u = r;
// 1 - search for ix until falling out of the trie
238
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.1. BinaryTrie: A digital search tree
for (i = 0; i < w; i++) {
c = (ix >>> w-i-1) & 1;
if (u.child[c] == null) break;
u = u.child[c];
}
if (i == w) return false; // trie already contains x - abort
Node pred = (c == right) ? u.jump : u.jump.child[0]; // save for step 3
u.jump = null; // u will have two children shortly
// 2 - add path to ix
for (; i < w; i++) {
c = (ix >>> w-i-1) & 1;
u.child[c] = newNode();
u.child[c].parent = u;
u = u.child[c];
}
u.x = x;
// 3 - add u to linked list
u.child[prev] = pred;
u.child[next] = pred.child[next];
u.child[prev].child[next] = u;
u.child[next].child[prev] = u;
// 4 - walk back up, updating jump pointers
Node v = u.parent;
while (v != null) {
if ((v.child[left] == null
&& (v.jump == null || it.intValue(v.jump.x) > ix))
|| (v.child[right] == null
&& (v.jump == null || it.intValue(v.jump.x) < ix)))
v.jump = u;
v = v.parent;
}
n++;
return true;
}
This method performs one walk down the search path for x and one walk back up. Each
step of these walks takes constant time, so the add(x) runs in O(w) time.
The remove(x) operation undoes the work of add(x). Like add(x), it has a lot of
things to take care of:
1. It follows the search path for x until reaching the leaf, u, containing x.
2. It removes u from the doubly-linked list
239
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.1. BinaryTrie: A digital search tree
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
Figure 13.5: Removing the value 9 from the BinaryTrie in Figure 13.2.
3. It deletes u and then walks back up the search path for x deleting nodes until reach-
ing a node v that has a child that is not on the search path for x
4. It walks upwards from v to the root updating any jump pointers that point to u.
A removal is illustrated in Figure 13.5.
BinaryTrie
boolean remove(T x) {
// 1 - find leaf, u, containing x
int i = 0, c, ix = it.intValue(x);
Node u = r;
for (i = 0; i < w; i++) {
c = (ix >>> w-i-1) & 1;
if (u.child[c] == null) return false;
u = u.child[c];
}
// 2 - remove u from linked list
u.child[prev].child[next] = u.child[next];
u.child[next].child[prev] = u.child[prev];
Node v = u;
// 3 - delete nodes on path to u
for (i = w-1; i >= 0; i--) {
c = (ix >>> w-i-1) & 1;
v = v.parent;
v.child[c] = null;
if (v.child[1-c] != null) break;
}
// 4 - update jump pointers
v.jump = u;
240
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.2. XFastTrie: Searching in Doubly-Logarithmic Time
for (; i >= 0; i--) {
c = (ix >>> w-i-1) & 1;
if (v.jump == u)
v.jump = u.child[1-c];
v = v.parent;
}
n--;
return true;
}
Theorem 13.1. A BinaryTrie implements the SSet interface for w-bit integers. A BinaryTrie
supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(w) time per operation. The space
used by a BinaryTrie that stores n values is O(n · w).
13.2 XFastTrie: Searching in Doubly-Logarithmic Time
The performance of the BinaryTrie structure is not that impressive. The number of el-
ements, n, stored in the structure is at most 2w , so log n ≤ w. In other words, any of the
comparison-based SSet structures described in other parts of this book are at least as effi-
cient as a BinaryTrie, and don’t have the restriction of only being able to store integers.
Next we describe the XFastTrie, which is just a BinaryTrie with w + 1 hash tables—
one for each level of the trie. These hash tables are used to speed up the find(x) operation
to O(log w) time. Recall that the find(x) operation in a BinaryTrie is almost complete
once we reach a node, u, where the search path for x would like to proceed to u.right (or
u.left) but u has no right (respectively, left) child. At this point, the search uses u.jump to
jump to a leaf, v, of the BinaryTrie and either return v or its successor in the linked list
of leaves. An XFastTrie speeds up the search process by using binary search on the levels
of the trie to locate the node u.
To use binary search, we need a way to determine if the node u we are looking for
is above a particular level, i, of if u is at or below level i. This information is given by
the highest-order i bits in the binary representation of x; these bits determine the search
path that x takes from the root to level i. For an example, refer to Figure 13.6; in this
figure the last node, u, on search path for 14 (whose binary representation is 1110) is the
node labelled 11?? at level 2 because there is no node labelled 111? at level 3. Thus, we
can label each node at level i with an i-bit integer. Then the node u we are searching
for is at or below level i if and only if there is a node at level i whose label matches the
highest-order i bits of x.
In an XFastTrie, we store, for each i ∈ {0, . . . , w}, all the nodes at level i in a USet,
241
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.2. XFastTrie: Searching in Doubly-Logarithmic Time
???? 0
1
0? ? ? 1? ? ? 1
1
00?? 01?? 10?? 11?? 2
1
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111? 3
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 4
Figure 13.6: The search path for 14 (1110) ends at the node labelled 11?? since there is no
node labelled 111?.
t[i], that is implemented as a hash table (Chapter 5). Using this USet allows us to check in
constant expected time if there is a node at level i whose label matches the highest-order
i bits of x. In fact, we can even find this node using t[i].find(x>>(w − i)).
The hash tables t[0], . . . , t[w] allow us to use binary search to find u. Initially, we
know that u is at some level i with 0 ≤ i < w + 1. We therefore initialize l = 0 and h = w + 1
and repeatedly look at the hash table t[i], where i = b(l + h)/2c. If t[i] contains a node
whose label matches x’s highest-order i bits then we set l = i (u is at or below level i),
otherwise we set h = i (u is above level i). This process terminates when h − l ≤ 1, in
which case we determine that u is at level l. We then complete the find(x) operation using
u.jump and the doubly-linked list of leaves.
XFastTrie
T find(T x) {
int l = 0, h = w+1, ix = it.intValue(x);
Node v, u = r, q = newNode();
while (h-l > 1) {
int i = (l+h)/2;
q.prefix = ix >>> w-i;
if ((v = t[i].find(q)) == null) {
h = i;
} else {
u = v;
l = i;
}
}
if (l == w) return u.x;
242
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.3. YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet
Node pred = (((ix >>> w-l-1) & 1) == 1) ? u.jump : u.jump.child[0];
return (pred.child[next] == dummy) ? null : pred.child[next].x;
}
Each iteration of the while loop in the above method decreases h − l by roughly a factor of
2, so this loop finds u after O(log w) iterations. Each iteration performs a constant amount
of work and one find(x) operation in a USet, which takes constant expected time. The
remaining work takes only constant time, so the find(x) method in an XFastTrie takes
only O(log w) expected time.
The add(x) and remove(x) methods for an XFastTrie are almost identical to the
same methods in a BinaryTrie. The only modifications are for managing the hash tables
t[0],. . . ,t[w]. During the add(x) operation, when a new node is created at level i, this node
is added to t[i]. During a remove(x) operation, when a node is removed form level i, this
node is removed from t[i]. Since adding and removing from a hash table take constant
expected time, this does not increase the running times of add(x) and remove(x) by more
than a constant factor. We omit a code listing or add(x) and remove(x) since it is almost
identical to the (long) code listing already provided for the same methods in a BinaryTrie.
The following theorem summarizes the performance of an XFastTrie:
Theorem 13.2. An XFastTrie implements the SSet interface for w-bit integers. An XFastTrie
supports the operations
• add(x) and remove(x) in O(w) expected time per operation and
• find(x) in O(log w) expected time per operation.
The space used by an XFastTrie that stores n values is O(n · w).
13.3 YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet
The XFastTrie is a big improvement over the BinaryTrie in terms of query time—some
would even call it an exponential improvement—but the add(x) and remove(x) operations
are still not terribly fast. Furthermore, the space usage, O(n · w), is higher than the other
SSet implementation in this book, which all use O(n) space. These two problems are re-
lated; if n add(x) operations build a structure of size n·w then the add(x) operation requires
on the order of w time (and space) per operation.
The YFastTrie data structure simultaneously addresses both the space and speed
issues of XFastTries. A YFastTrie uses an XFastTrie, xft, but only stores O(n/w) values
243
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.3. YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0, 1, 3 4, 5, 8, 9 10, 11, 13
Figure 13.7: A YFastTrie containing the values 0, 1, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11, and 13.
in xft. In this way, the total space used by xft is only O(n). Furthermore, only one out of
every w add(x) or remove(x) operations in the YFastTrie results in an add(x) or remove(x)
operation in xft. By doing this, the average cost incurred by calls to xft’s add(x) and
remove(x) operations is only constant.
The obvious question becomes: If xft only stores n/w elements, where do the re-
maining n(1 − 1/w) elements go? These elements go into secondary structures, in this case an
extended version of treaps (Section 7.2). There are roughly n/w of these secondary struc-
tures so, on average, each of them stores O(w) items. Treaps support logarithmic time SSet
operations, so the operations on these treaps will run in O(log w) time, as required.
More concretely, a YFastTrie contains an XFastTrie, xft, that contains a random
sample of the data, where each element appears in the sample independently with proba-
bility 1/w. For convenience, the value 2w − 1, is always contained in xft. Let x0 < x1 < · · · <
xk−1 denote the elements stored in xft. Associated with each element, xi , is a treap, ti ,
that stores all values in the range xi−1 + 1, . . . , xi . This is illustrated in Figure 13.7.
The find(x) operation in a YFastTrie is fairly easy. We search for x in xft and find
some value xi associated with the treap ti . When then use the treap find(x) method on ti
to answer the query. The entire method is a one-liner:
YFastTrie
T find(T x) {
return xft.find(new Pair<T>(it.intValue(x))).t.find(x);
244
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.3. YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet
}
The first find(x) operation (on xft) takes O(log w) time. The second find(x) operation (on
a treap) takes O(log r) time, where r is the size of the treap. Later in this section, we will
show that the expected size of the treap is O(w) so that this operation takes O(log w) time.1
Adding an element to a YFastTrie is also fairly simple—most of the time. The
add(x) method calls xft.find(x) to locate the treap, t, into which x should be inserted. It
then calls t.add(x) to add x to t. At this point, it tosses a biased coin, that comes up heads
with probability 1/w. If this coin comes up heads, x will be added to xft.
This is where things get a little more complicated. When x is added to xft, the
treap t needs to be split into two treaps t1 and t0 . The treap t1 contains all the values less
than or equal to x; t0 is the original treap, t, with the elements of t1 removed. Once this
is done we add the pair (x, t1) to xft. Figure 13.8 shows an example.
YFastTrie
boolean add(T x) {
int ix = it.intValue(x);
STreap<T> t = xft.find(new Pair<T>(ix)).t;
if (t.add(x)) {
n++;
if (rand.nextInt(w) == 0) {
STreap<T> t1 = t.split(x);
xft.add(new Pair<T>(ix, t1));
}
return true;
}
return false;
}
Adding x to t takes O(log w) time. Exercise 7.12 shows that splitting t into t1 and t0 can
also be done in O(log w) expected time. Adding the pair (x,t1) to xft takes O(w) time, but
only happens with probability 1/w. Therefore, the expected running time of the add(x)
operation is
1
O(log w) + O(w) = O(log w)
w
The remove(x) method just undoes the work performed by add(x). We use xft to
find the leaf, u, in xft that contains the answer to xft.find(x). From u, we get the treap, t,
containing x and remove x from t. If x was also stored in xft (and x is not equal to 2w − 1)
1 This is an application of Jensen’s Inequality: If E[r] = w, then E[log r] ≤ log w.
245
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.3. YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0, 1, 2, 3 4, 5, 6 4, 5,8, 9 10, 11, 13
Figure 13.8: Adding the values 2 and 6 to a YFastTrie. The coin toss for 6 came up heads,
so 6 was added to xft and the treap containing 4, 5, 6, 8, 9 was split.
then we remove x from xft and add the elements from x’s treap to the treap, t2, that is
stored by u’s successor in the linked list. This is illustrated in Figure 13.9.
YFastTrie
boolean remove(T x) {
int ix = it.intValue(x);
Node<T> u = xft.findNode(ix);
boolean ret = u.x.t.remove(x);
if (ret) n--;
if (u.x.x == ix && ix != 0xffffffff) {
STreap<T> t2 = u.child[1].x.t;
t2.absorb(u.x.t);
xft.remove(u.x);
}
return ret;
}
Finding the node u in xft takes O(log w) expected time. Removing x from t takes O(log w)
expected time. Again, Exercise 7.12 shows that merging all the elements of t into t2 can
be done in O(log w) time. If necessary, removing x from xft takes O(w) time, but x is only
contained in xft with probability 1/w. Therefore, the expected time to remove an element
from a YFastTrie is O(log w).
Earlier in the discussion, we put off arguing about the sizes of treaps in this struc-
246
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.3. YFastTrie: A Doubly-Logarithmic Time SSet
????
0? ? ? 1? ? ?
00?? 01?? 10?? 11??
000? 001? 010? 011? 100? 101? 110? 111?
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
0,1,2,3 4, 5, 6 8, 9 8, 10, 11, 13
Figure 13.9: Removing the values 1 and 9 from a YFastTrie in Figure 13.8.
ture until later. Before finishing we prove the result we need.
Lemma 13.1. Let x be an integer stored in a YFastTrie and let nx denote the number of ele-
ments in the treap, t, that contains x. Then E[nx ] ≤ 2w − 1.
Proof. Refer to Figure 13.10. Let x1 < x2 < · · · < xi = x < · · · < xn denote the elements stored
in the YFastTrie. The treap t contains some elements greater than or equal to x. These
are xi , xi+1 , . . . , xi+j−1 , where xi+j−1 is the only one of these elements in which the biased
coin toss performed in the add(x) method came up heads. In other words, E[j] is equal to
the expected number of biased coin tosses required to obtain the first heads.2 Each coin
toss is independent and comes up heads with probability 1/w, so E[j] ≤ w. (See Lemma 4.2
for an analysis of this for the case w = 2.)
Similarly, the elements of t smaller than x are xi−1 , . . . , xi−k where all these k coin
tosses come up tails and the coin toss for xi−k−1 comes up heads. Therefore, E[k] ≤ w − 1,
since this is the same coin tossing experiment considered previously, but in which the last
toss doesn’t count. In summary, nx = j + k, so
E[nx ] = E[j + k] = E[j] + E[k] ≤ 2w − 1 .
2 This analysis ignores the fact that j never exceeds n − i + 1. However, this only decreases E[j], so the upper
bound still holds
247
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.4. Discussion and Exercises
elements in treap, t, containing x
z }| {
H T T ... T T T T T ... T H
xi−k−1 xi−k xi−k+1 ... xi−2 xi−1 xi = x xi+1 xi+2 ... xi+j−2 xi+j−1
| {z } | {z }
k j
Figure 13.10: The number of elements in the treap, t, containing x is determined by two
coin tossing experiments.
Lemma 13.1 was the last piece in the proof of the following theorem, which sum-
marizes the performance of the YFastTrie:
Theorem 13.3. A YFastTrie implements the SSet interface for w-bit integers. A YFastTrie
supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(log w) expected time per operation.
The space used by a YFastTrie that stores n values is O(n + w).
The w term in the space requirement comes from the fact that xft always stores
the value 2w − 1. The implementation could be modified (at the expense of adding some
extra cases to the code) so that it is unnecessary to store this value. In this case, the space
requirement in the theorem becomes O(n).
13.4 Discussion and Exercises
The first data structure to provide O(log w) time add(x), remove(x), and find(x) operations
was proposed by van Emde Boas and has since become known as the van Emde Boas (or
stratified) tree [72]. The original van Emde Boas structure had size 2w , so was impractical
for large integers.
The XFastTrie and YFastTrie data structures were discovered by Willard [75].
The XFastTrie structure is very closely related to van Emde Boas trees. One view of this
is that the hash tables in an XFastTrie replace arrays in a van Emde Boas tree. That is,
instead of storing the hash table t[i], a van Emde Boas tree stores an array of length 2i .
Another structure for storing integers is Fredman and Willard’s fusion trees [30].
This structure can store n w-bit integers in O(n) space so that the find(x) operation runs in
p
O((log n)/(log w)) time. By using a fusion tree when log w > log n and a YFastTrie when
p
log w ≤ log n one obtains an O(n) space data structure that can implement the find(x)
p
operation in O( log n) time. Recent lower-bound results of Pǎtraşcu and Thorup [59] show
that these results are more-or-less optimal, at least for structures that use only O(n) space.
248
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.4. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 13.1. Design and implement a simplified version of a BinaryTrie that doesn’t
have a linked list or jump pointers, but for which find(x) still runs in O(w) time.
Exercise 13.2. Design and implement a simplified implementation of an XFastTrie that
doesn’t use a binary trie at all. Instead, your implementation should store everything in a
doubly-linked list and w + 1 hash tables.
Exercise 13.3. We can think of a BinaryTrie as a structure that stores bit strings of length
w in such a way that each bitstring is represented as a root to leaf path. Extend this idea
into an SSet implementation that stores variable-length strings and implements add(s),
remove(s), and find(s) in time proporitional to the length of s.
Hint: Each node in your data structure should store a hash table that is indexed by char-
acter values.
Exercise 13.4. For an integer x ∈ {0, . . . 2w − 1}, let d(x) denote the difference between x
and the value returned by find(x) [if find(x) returns null, then define d(x) as 2w ]. For
example, if find(23) returns 43, then d(23) = 20.
1. Design and implement a modified version of the find(x) operation in an XFastTrie
that runs in O(1 + log d(x)) expected time. Hint: The hash table t[w] contains all the
values, x, such that d(x) = 0, so that would be a good place to start.
2. Design and implement a modified version of the find(x) operation in an XFastTrie
that runs in O(1 + log log d(x)) expected time.
249
13. Data Structures for Integers 13.4. Discussion and Exercises
250
Chapter 14
External Memory Searching
Throughout this book, we have been using the w-bit word-RAM model of computation de-
fined in Section 1.3. An implicit assumption of this model is that our computer has a large
enough random access memory to store all the data in the data structure. In some situa-
tions, this assumption is not valid. There exist collections of data so big that there is no
computer with a memory large enough to store all the data. In such cases, the application
must resort to storing the data on some external storage medium such as a hard disk, a
solid state disk, or even a network file server (which has its own external storage).
Accessing an item from the external storage is extremely slow. The hard disk at-
tached to the computer on which this book is being written has an average access time
of 19ms and the solid state drive attached to this computer has an average access time of
0.3ms. In contrast, the random access memory in this computer has an average access time
of less than 0.000113ms. It is more than 2 500 times faster to access RAM than the solid
state drive and more than 160 000 times faster to access RAM than the hard drive.
These speeds are fairly typical; accessing a random byte from RAM is thousands
of times faster than accessing a random byte from a hard disk or solid-state drive. Access
time, however, does not tell the whole story. When we access a byte from a hard disk
or solid state disk, an entire block of the disk is read. Each of the drives attached to this
computer has a block size of 4 096; each time we read one byte, the drive gives us a block
containing 4 096 bytes. If we organize our data structure carefully, this means that each
disk access could yield 4 096 bytes that are helpful in completing whatever operation we
are doing.
This is the idea behind the external memory model of computation, illustrated schemat-
ically in Figure 14.1. In this model, the computer has access to a large external memory
where all the data resides. This memory is divided into memory blocks each containing B
251
14. External Memory Searching 14.1. The Block Store
CPU
x
RAM
x
x
External Memory disk
Figure 14.1: In the external memory model, accessing an individual item, x, in the external
memory requires reading the entire block containing x into RAM.
words. The computer also has a limited internal memory on which it can perform compu-
tations. Transferring a block between internal memory and external memory takes con-
stant time. Computations performed within the internal memory are free; they take no
time at all. The fact that internal memory computations are free may seem a bit strange,
but this is really just to emphasize the fact that external memory is so much slower than
RAM.
In the full-blown external memory model, the size of the internal memory is also
a parameter. However, for the data structures described in this chapter, it is sufficient to
have an internal memory of size O(B + logB n). That is, the memory needs to be capable
of storing a constant number of blocks and a recursion stack of height O(logB n). In most
cases, the O(B) term dominates the memory requirement. For example, even with the
relatively small value B = 32, B ≥ logB n for all n ≤ 2160 . In decimal, B ≥ logB n for any
n ≤ 1 461 501 637 330 902 918 203 684 832 716 283 019 655 932 542 976.
14.1 The Block Store
The notion of external memory includes a large number of possible different devices, each
of which has their own block size and is accessed with their own collection of system calls.
To simplify the exposition of this chapter so that we can focus on the common ideas, we
encapsulate external memory devices with an object called a BlockStore. A BlockStore
stores a collection of memory blocks, each of size B. Each block is uniquely identified by
252
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
its integer index. A BlockStore supports these operations:
1. readBlock(i): Return the contents of the block whose index is i.
2. writeBlock(i, b): Write contents of b to the block whose index is i.
3. placeBlock(b): Return a new index and store the contents of b at this index.
4. freeBlock(i): Free the block whose index is i. This indicates that the contents of
this block are no longer used so the external memory allocated by this block may be
reused.
The easiest way to imagine a BlockStore is to think of it as storing a file on
disk that is partitioned into blocks, each containing B bytes. Then readBlock(i) and
writeBlock(i, b) simply read and write bytes iB, . . . , (i + 1)B − 1 of this file. In addition, a
simple BlockStore could keep a free list of blocks that are available for use. Blocks freed
with freeBlock(i) are added to the free list. In this way, placeBlock(b) can use a block
from the free list or, if none is available, can append a new block to the end of the file.
14.2 B-Trees
In this section we discuss a generalization of binary trees, called B-trees, that is efficient in
the external memory model. Alternatively, B-trees can be viewed as the natural general-
ization of 2-4 trees described in Section 9.1. (A 2-4 tree is a special case of a B-tree that we
get by setting B = 2.)
For any integer B ≥ 2, a B-tree is a tree in which all leaves have the same depth and
every non-root internal node, u, has at least B children and at most 2B children. The chil-
dren of u are stored in an array, u.children. The requirement on the number of children
is relaxed at the root, which can have anywhere between 2 and 2B children.
If the height of a B-tree is h, then it follows that the number, `, of leaves in the
B-tree satisfies
2Bh−1 ≤ ` ≤ 2(2B)h−1 .
Taking the logarithm of the first inequality and rearranging terms yields:
log ` − 1
h≤ +1
log B
log `
≤ +1
log B
= logB ` + 1 .
253
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
10
3 6 14 17 21
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
Figure 14.2: A B-tree with B = 2.
That is, the height of a B-tree is proportional to the base-B logarithm of the number of
leaves.
Each node, u, in B-tree stores an array of keys u.keys[0], . . . , u.keys[2B−1]. If u is an
internal node with k children, then the number of keys stored at u is exactly k −1 and these
are stored in u.keys[0], . . . , u.keys[k − 2]. The remaining 2B − k + 1 array entries in u.keys
are set to null. If u is a non-root leaf node, then u contains between B − 1 and 2B − 1 keys.
The keys in a B-tree respect an ordering similar to the keys in a binary search tree. For any
node, u, that stores k − 1 keys,
u.keys[0] < u.keys[1] < · · · < u.keys[k − 2] .
If u is an internal node, then for every i ∈ {0, . . . , k − 2}, u.keys[i] is larger than every key
stored in the subtree rooted at u.children[i] but smaller than every key stored in the
subtree rooted at u.children[i + 1]. Informally,
u.children[i] ≺ u.keys[i] ≺ u.children[i + 1] .
An example of a B-tree with B = 2 is shown in Figure 14.2.
Note that all the data stored in a B-tree node has size O(B). Therefore, in an external
memory setting, the value of B in a B-tree is chosen so that a node fits into a single external
memory block. In this way, the time it takes to perform a B-tree operation in the external
memory model is proportional to the number of nodes that are accessed (read or written)
by the operation.
For example, if the keys are 4 byte integers and the node indices are also 4 bytes,
then setting B = 256 means that each node stores
(4 + 4) × 2B = 8 × 512 = 4096
254
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
10
3 6 14 17 21
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
16.5
Figure 14.3: A successful search (for the value 4) and an unsuccessful search (for the value
16.5) in a B-tree. Shaded nodes show where the value of z is updated during the searches.
bytes of data. This would be a perfect value of B for the hard disk or solid state drive
discussed in the introduction to this chaper, which have a block size of 4096 bytes.
The BTree class, which implements a B-tree, stores a BlockStore, bs, that stores
BTree nodes as well as the index, ri, of the root node. As usual, an integer, n, is used to
keep track of the number of items in the data structure:
BTree
int n;
BlockStore<Node> bs;
int ri;
14.2.1 Searching
The implementation of the find(x) operation, which is illustrated in Figure 14.3, general-
izes the find(x) operation in a binary search tree. The search for x starts at the root and
uses the keys stored at a node, u, to determine in which of u’s children the search should
continue.
More specifically, at a node u, the search checks if x is stored in u.keys. If so, x has
been found and the search is complete. Otherwise, the search finds the smallest integer,
i, such that u.keys[i] > x and continues the search in the subtree rooted at u.children[i].
If no key in u.keys is greater than x, then the search continues in u’s rightmost child. Just
like binary search trees, the algorithm keeps track of the most recently seen key, z, that is
larger than x. In case x is not found, z is returned as the smallest value that is greater or
equal to x.
BTree
T find(T x) {
T z = null;
int ui = ri;
255
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15
a 1 4 5 8 9 10 14 16 22 31 45 – – – – –
27
Figure 14.4: The execution of findIt(a, 27).
while (ui >= 0) {
Node u = bs.readBlock(ui);
int i = findIt(u.keys, x);
if (i < 0) return u.keys[-(i+1)]; // found it
if (u.keys[i] != null)
z = u.keys[i];
ui = u.children[i];
}
return z;
}
Central to the find(x) method is the findIt(a, x) method that searches in a null-padded
sorted array, a, for the value x. This method, illustrated in Figure 14.4, works for any array,
a, where a[0], . . . , a[k − 1] are a sequence of keys in sorted order and a[k], . . . , a[a.length − 1]
are all set to null. If x is in the array at position i, then findIt(a, x) returns −i − 1.
Otherwise, it returns the smallest index, i, such that a[i] > x or a[i] = null.
BTree
int findIt(T[] a, T x) {
int lo = 0, hi = a.length;
while (hi != lo) {
int m = (hi+lo)/2;
int cmp = a[m] == null ? -1 : compare(x, a[m]);
if (cmp < 0)
hi = m; // look in first half
else if (cmp > 0)
lo = m+1; // look in second half
else
return -m-1; // found it
}
return lo;
}
256
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
The findIt(a, x) method does its job using a binary search that halves the search space at
each step, so it runs in O(log(a.length)) time. In this case a.length = 2B, so findIt(a, x)
runs in O(log B) time.
We can analyze the running time of a B-tree find(x) operation both in the usual
word-RAM model (where every instruction counts) and in the external memory model
(where we only count the number of nodes accessed). Since each leaf in a B-tree stores at
least one key and the height of a B-Tree with ` leaves is O(logB `), the height of a B-tree
that stores n keys is O(logB n). Therefore, in the external memory model, the time taken
by the find(x) operation is O(logB n). To determine the running time in the word-RAM
model, we have to account for the cost of calling findIt(a, x) for each node we access, so
the running time of find(x) in the word-RAM model is
O(logB n) × O(log B) = O(log n) .
14.2.2 Addition
One important difference between B-trees and the BinarySearchTree data structure from
Section 6.2 is that the nodes of a B-tree do not store pointers to their parents. The reason
for this will be explained shortly. The lack of parent pointers has the consequence that the
add(x) and remove(x) operations on B-trees are most easily implemented using recursion.
Like all balanced search trees, some form of rebalancing is sometimes required
during an add(x) operation. In a B-tree, this is done by splitting nodes. Refer to Figure 14.5
for what follows. Although splitting takes place across two levels of recursion, it is best
understood as an operation that takes a node u containing 2B keys and having 2B + 1
children. It creates a new node, w, that adopts u.children[B], . . . , u.children[2B]. The new
node w also takes u’s B largest keys, u.keys[B], . . . , u.keys[2B − 1]. At this point, u has B
children and B keys. The extra key, u.keys[B − 1], is passed up to the parent of u, which
also adopts w.
Notice that the splitting operation modifies 3 nodes: u, u’s parent, and the new
node, w. This is where it is important that the nodes of a B-tree do not maintain parent
pointers. If they did, then the B + 1 children adopted by w would all need to have their
parent pointers modified. This would increase the number of external memory access
from 3 to B + 4 and would make B-trees much less efficient for large values of B.
The add(x) method in a B-tree is illustrated in Figure 14.6. At a high level, this
method finds a leaf, u, at which to add the value x. If this causes u to become overfull
(because it already contained B − 1 keys), then u is split. If this causes u’s parent to become
257
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
b d f u
¢¢¢
u
h j m o q s
A C E V
G I K N P R T
u.split()
⇓
b d f m u
¢
u w
h j m o q s
A C E V
G I K N P R T
Figure 14.5: Splitting the node u in a B-tree (B = 3). Notice that the key u.keys[2] = m
passes from u to its parent.
258
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
10
3 6 14 17 22
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 21 23 24
⇓
10
3 6 14 17 19 22
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 21 23 24
⇓
10 17
3 6 14 17 19 22
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 20 21 23 24
Figure 14.6: The add(x) operation in a BTree. Adding the value 21 results in two nodes
being split.
overfull then u’s parent is also split, which may cause u’s grandparent to become overfull,
and so on. This process continues, moving up the tree one level at a time until reaching a
node that is not overfull or until the root is split. In the former case, the process stops. In
the latter case, a new root is created whose two children become the nodes obtained when
the original root was split.
In summary, the high-level view of the add(x) method is that it walks from the root
to a leaf searching for x, adds x to this leaf, and then walks back up to the root, splitting
any overfull nodes it encounters along the way. With this high level view in mind, we can
now delve into the details of how this method can be implemented recursively.
The real work of add(x) is done by the addRecursive(x, ui) method, which adds the
value x to the subtree whose root, u, has identifier ui. If u is a leaf, then x is just added into
u.keys. Otherwise, x is added recursively into the appropriate child, u0 , of u. The result of
259
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
this recursive call is normally null but may also be a reference to a newly-created node,
w, that was created because u0 was split. In this case, u adopts w and takes its first key,
completing the splitting operation on u0 .
After x has been added (either to u or to a descendant of u), the addRecursive(x, ui)
method checks to see if u is storing too many (more than 2B − 1) keys. If so, then u needs to
be split with a call to the u.split() method. The result of calling u.split(), is a new node
that is used as the return value for addRecursive(x, ui).
BTree
Node addRecursive(T x, int ui) throws DuplicateValueException {
Node u = bs.readBlock(ui);
int i = findIt(u.keys, x);
if (i < 0) throw new DuplicateValueException();
if (u.children[i] < 0) { // leaf node, just add it
u.add(x, -1);
bs.writeBlock(u.id, u);
} else {
Node w = addRecursive(x, u.children[i]);
if (w != null) { // child was split, w is new child
x = w.remove(0);
bs.writeBlock(w.id, w);
u.add(x, w.id);
bs.writeBlock(u.id, u);
}
}
return u.isFull() ? u.split() : null;
}
The addRecursive(x, ui) method is just a helper for the add(x) method, which calls
addRecursive(x, ri) to insert x into the root of the B-tree. If addRecursive(x, ri) causes
the root to split, then a new root is created that takes as its children both the old root and
the new node created when the old root was split.
BTree
boolean add(T x) {
Node w;
try {
w = addRecursive(x, ri);
} catch (DuplicateValueException e) {
return false;
}
if (w != null) { // root was split, make new root
Node newroot = new Node();
x = w.remove(0);
260
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
bs.writeBlock(w.id, w);
newroot.children[0] = ri;
newroot.keys[0] = x;
newroot.children[1] = w.id;
ri = newroot.id;
bs.writeBlock(ri, newroot);
}
n++;
return true;
}
The add(x) method and its helper, addRecursive(x, ui), can be analyzed in two
phases:
Downward phase: During the downward phase of the recursion, before x has been added,
they access a sequence of nodes and call findIt(a, x) on each node. Like the find(x)
method, this takes O(logB n) time in the external memory model and O(log n) time in
the word-RAM model.
Upward phase: During the upward phase of the recursion, after x has been added, these
methods perform a sequence of at most O(logB n) splits. Each split involves only 3
nodes, so this phase takes O(logB n) time in the external memory model. However,
each split involves moving B keys and children from one node to another so, in the
word-RAM model, this takes O(B log n) time.
Recall that the value of B can be quite large, even much larger than log n. Therefore,
in the word-RAM model, adding a value to a B-tree can be much slower than adding into a
balanced binary search tree. Later, in Section 14.2.4, we will show that the situation is not
quite so bad; the amortized number of split operations done during an add(x) operation
is constant. This shows that the (amortized) running time of the add(x) operation in the
word-RAM model is O(B + log n).
14.2.3 Removal
The remove(x) operation in a BTree is, again, most easily implemented as a recursive
method. Although the recursive implementation of remove(x) spreads the complexity
across several methods, the overall process, which is illustrated in Figure 14.7, is fairly
straightforward. By shuffling keys around, removal is reduced to the problem of remov-
ing a value, x0 , from some leaf, u. Removing x0 may leave u with less than B − 1 keys; this
situation is called an underflow.
261
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
10
3 14 17 21
1 4 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
⇓
10
3 14 17 21
v w
1 4 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
merge(v, w)
⇓
10
w v
14 17 21
1 3 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
shiftLR(w, v)
⇓
14
10 17 21
1 3 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
Figure 14.7: Removing the value 4 from a B-tree results in one merge and one borrowing
operation.
262
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
10
3 6 14 17 21
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 11 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
⇓
11
3 6 14 17 21
0 1 2 4 5 7 8 9 12 13 15 16 18 19 20 22 23
Figure 14.8: The remove(x) operation in a BTree. To remove the value x = 10 we replace it
with the the value x0 = 11 and remove 11 from the leaf that contains it.
When an underflow occurs, u either borrows keys from one of its siblings or is
merged with one of its siblings. If u is merged with a sibling, then u’s parent will now
have one less child and one less key, which can cause u’s parent to underflow; this is again
corrected by borrowing or merging and merging may cause u’s grandparent to underflow.
This process works its way back up to the root until there is no more underflow or until
the root has its last two children merged into a single child. When the latter case occurs,
the root is removed and its lone child becomes the new root.
Next we delve into the details of how each of these steps is implemented. The first
job of the remove(x) method is to find the element x that should be removed. If x is found
in a leaf, then x is removed from this leaf. Otherwise, if x is found at u.keys[i] for some
internal node, u, then the algorithm removes the smallest value, x0 , in the subtree rooted
at u.children[i + 1]. The value x0 is the smallest value stored in the BTree that is greater
than x. The value of x0 is then used to replace x in u.keys[i]. This process is illustrated in
Figure 14.8.
The removeRecursive(x, ui) method is a recursive implementation of the preced-
ing algorithm:
BTree
boolean removeRecursive(T x, int ui) {
263
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
if (ui < 0) return false; // didn’t find it
Node u = bs.readBlock(ui);
int i = findIt(u.keys, x);
if (i < 0) { // found it
i = -(i+1);
if (u.isLeaf()) {
u.remove(i);
} else {
u.keys[i] = removeSmallest(u.children[i+1]);
checkUnderflow(u, i+1);
}
return true;
} else if (removeRecursive(x, u.children[i])) {
checkUnderflow(u, i);
return true;
}
return false;
}
T removeSmallest(int ui) {
Node u = bs.readBlock(ui);
if (u.isLeaf())
return u.remove(0);
T y = removeSmallest(u.children[0]);
checkUnderflow(u, 0);
return y;
}
Note that, after recursively removing x from the ith child of u, removeRecursive(x, ui)
needs to ensure that this child still has at least B − 1 keys. In the preceding code, this is
done with a call to a method called checkUnderflow(x, i), which checks for, and corrects,
an underflow in the ith child of u. Let w be the ith child of u. If w has only B − 2 keys, then
this needs to be fixed. The fix requires using a sibling of w. This can be either child i + 1 of
u or child i − 1 of u. We will usually use child i − 1 of u, which is the sibling, v, of w directly
to its left. The only time this doesn’t work is when i = 0, in which case we use the sibling
directly to w’s right.
BTree
void checkUnderflow(Node u, int i) {
if (u.children[i] < 0) return;
if (i == 0)
checkUnderflowZero(u, i); // use u’s right sibling
else
checkUnderflowNonZero(u,i);
264
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
u
b d f o s
¢
v w
h j m q
A C E T
G I K N P R
shiftRL(v, w)
⇓
u
b d f m s
¢ ¢
v w
h j o q
A C E T
G I K N P R
Figure 14.9: If v has more than B − 1 keys, then w can borrow keys from v.
}
In the following, we focus on the case when i , 0 so that any underflow at the ith child of
u will be corrected with the help of the (i − 1)st child of u. The case i = 0 is similar and the
details can be found in the accompanying source code.
To fix an underflow at node w, we need to find more keys (and possibly also chil-
dren), for w. There are two ways to do this:
Borrowing: If w has a sibling, v, with more than B − 1 keys, then w can borrow some keys
(and possibly also children) from v. More specifically, if v stores size(v) keys, then
between them, v and w have a total of
B − 2 + size(w) ≥ 2B − 2
keys. We can therefore shift keys from v to w so that each of v and w has at least B − 1
keys. This process is illustrated in Figure 14.9.
Merging: If v has only B − 1 keys, we must do something more drastic, since v can not
265
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
u
b d f m q
¢ ¢
v w
h j o
A C E R
G I K N P
merge(v, w)
⇓
u
b d f q
h j m o
A C E R
G I K N P
Figure 14.10: Merging two siblings v and w in a B-tree (B = 3).
afford to give any keys to w. Therefore, we merge v and w as shown in Figure 14.10.
The merge operation is the opposite of the split operation. It takes two nodes that
contain a total of 2B − 3 keys and merges them into a single node that contains 2B − 2
keys. (The additional key comes from the fact that, when we merge v and w, their
common parent, u, now has one less child and therefore needs to give up one of its
keys.)
BTree
void checkUnderflowNonZero(Node u, int i) {
Node w = bs.readBlock(u.children[i]); // w is child of u
if (w.size() < B-1) { // underflow at w
Node v = bs.readBlock(u.children[i-1]); // v is left sibling of w
if (v.size() > B) { // w can borrow from v
shiftLR(u, i-1, v, w);
} else { // v will absorb w
merge(u, i-1, v, w);
}
}
}
void checkUnderflowZero(Node u, int i) {
266
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
Node w = bs.readBlock(u.children[i]); // w is child of u
if (w.size() < B-1) { // underflow at w
Node v = bs.readBlock(u.children[i+1]); // v is right sibling of w
if (v.size() > B) { // w can borrow from v
shiftRL(u, i, v, w);
} else { // w will absorb w
merge(u, i, w, v);
u.children[i] = w.id;
}
}
}
To summarize, the remove(x) method in a B-tree follows a root to leaf path, removes
a key x0 from a leaf, u, and then performs zero or more merge operations involving u and its
ancestors, and performs at most one borrowing operation. Since each merge and borrow
operation involves modifying only 3 nodes, and only O(logB n) of these operations occur,
the entire process takes O(logB n) time in the external memory model. Again, however,
each merge and borrow operation takes O(B) time in the word-RAM model, so (for now)
the most we can say about the running time required by remove(x) in the word-RAM model
is that it is O(B logB n).
14.2.4 Amortized Analysis of B-Trees
Thus far, we have shown that
1. In the external memory model, the running time of find(x), add(x), and remove(x)
in a B-tree is O(logB n).
2. In the word-RAM model, the running time of find(x) is O(log n) and the running
time of add(x) and remove(x) is O(B log n).
The following lemma shows that, so far, we have overestimated the number of
merge and split operations performed by B-trees.
Lemma 14.1. Starting with an empty B-tree and performing any sequence of m add(x) and
remove(x) operations results in at most 3m/2 splits, merges, and borrows being performed.
Proof. The proof of this has already been sketched in Section 9.3 for the special case in
which B = 2. The lemma can be proven using a credit scheme, in which
1. each split, merge, or borrow operation is paid for with two credits, i.e., a credit is
removed each time one of these operations occurs; and
267
14. External Memory Searching 14.2. B-Trees
2. at most 3 credits are created during any add(x) or remove(x) operation.
Since at most 3m credits are ever created and each split, merge, and borrow is paid for with
with 2 credits, it follows that at most 3m/2 splits, merges, and borrows are performed.
These credits are illustrated using the ¢ symbol in Figures 14.5, 14.9, and 14.10.
To keep track of these credits the proof maintains the following credit invariant:
Any non-root node with B − 1 keys stores 1 credit and any node with 2B − 1 keys stores 3
credits. A node that stores at least B keys and most 2B − 2 keys need not store any credits.
What remains is to show that we can maintain the credit invariant and satisfy properties
1 and 2, above, during each add(x) and remove(x) operation.
Adding: The add(x) method does not perform any merges or borrows, so we need only
consider split operations that occur as a result of calls to add(x).
Each split operation occurs because a key is added to a node, u, that already con-
tains 2B − 1 keys. When this happens, u is split into two nodes, u0 and u00 having B − 1 and
B keys, respectively. Prior to this operation, u was storing 2B − 1 keys, and hence 3 credits.
Two of these credits can be used to pay for the split and the other credit can be given to u0
(which has B − 1 keys) to maintain the credit invariant. Therefore, we can pay for the split
and maintain the credit invariant during any split.
The only other modification to nodes that occur during an add(x) operation happen
after all splits, if any, are complete. This modification involves adding a new key to some
node u0 . If, prior to this, u0 had 2B − 2 children, then it now has 2B − 1 children and must
therefore receive 3 credits. These are the only credits given out by the add(x) method.
Removing: During a call to remove(x), zero or more merges occur and are possibly fol-
lowed by a single borrow. Each merge occurs because two nodes, v and w, that each had
exactly B−1 keys prior to calling remove(x) were merged into a single node that has exactly
2B − 2 keys. Each such merge therefore frees up 2 credits that can be used to pay for the
merge.
After any merges are performed, at most one borrow operation occurs, after which
no further merges or borrows occur. This borrow operation occurs when we remove a key
from a node, v, that has B − 1 keys. The node v therefore has one credit and this credit goes
towards the cost of the borrow. This single credit is not enough to pay for the borrow, so
we create one credit to complete the payment.
At this point, we have created one credit and we still to show that the credit in-
variant can be maintained. In the worst case, v’s sibling, w, has exactly B keys before the
268
14. External Memory Searching 14.3. Discussion and Exercises
borrow so that, afterwards, both v and w have B − 1 keys. This means that v and w each
need to be storing a credit when the operation is complete. Therefore, in this case, we
create an addition 2 credits to give to v and w. Since a borrow happens at most once during
a remove(x) operation, this means that we create at most 3 credits, as required.
If the remove(x) operation does not include a borrow operation this is because it
finishes by removing a key from some node that, prior to the operation, had B or more
keys. In the worst case, this node had exactly B keys, so that it now has B − 1 keys and
must be given 1 credit, which we create.
In either case—whether the removal finishes with a borrow operation or not—at
most 3 credits need to be created during a call to remove(x) to maintain the credit invariant
and pay for all borrows and merges that occur. This completes the proof of the lemma.
The purpose of Lemma 14.1 is to show that, in the word-RAM model the cost of
splits, merges and joins during a sequence of m add(x) and remove(x) operations is only
O(Bm). That is, the amortized cost per operation is only O(B), so that the amortized cost of
add(x) and remove(x) in the word-RAM model is O(B + log n). This is summarized by the
following pair of theorems:
Theorem 14.1 (External Memory B-Trees). A BTree implements the SSet interface. In the
external memory model, a BTree supports the operations add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in
O(logB n) time per operation.
Theorem 14.2 (Word-RAM B-Trees). A BTree implements the SSet interface. In the word-
RAM model, and ignoring the cost of splits, merges, and borrows, a BTree supports the opera-
tions add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in O(log n) time per operation. Furthermore, beginning
with an empty BTree, any sequence of m add(x) and remove(x) operations results in a total of
O(Bm) time spent performing splits, merges, and borrows.
14.3 Discussion and Exercises
The external memory model of computation was introduced by Aggarwal and Vitter [4].
It is sometimes also called the I/O model or the disk access model.
B-Trees are to external memory searching what binary search trees are to internal
memory searching. B-trees were introduced by Bayer and McCreight [9] in 1970 and,
less than ten years later, they were referred to as ubiquitous in the title of Comer’s ACM
Computing Surveys article [15].
269
14. External Memory Searching 14.3. Discussion and Exercises
Like binary search trees, there are many variants of B-Trees including B+ -trees, B∗ -
trees, and counted B-trees. B-trees are indeed ubiquitous and are the primary data struc-
ture in many file systems, including Apple’s HFS+, Microsoft’s NTFS, and Linux’s Ext4;
every major database system; and key-value stores used in cloud computing. Graefe’s re-
cent survey [36] provides a 200+ page overview of the many modern applications, variants,
and optimizations of B-trees.
B-trees implement the SSet interface. If only the USet interface is needed, then
external memory hashing could be used as an alternative to B-trees. External memory
hashing schemes do exist; see, for example, Reference [43]. These schemes implement
the USet operations in O(1) expected time in the external memory model. However, for a
variety of reasons, many applications still use B-trees even though they only require USet
operations.
One reason B-trees are such a popular choice is that they often perform better than
their O(logB n) running time bounds suggest. The reason for this is that, in external mem-
ory settings, the value of B is typically quite large—in the hundreds or even thousands.
This means that 99% or even 99.9% of the data in a B-tree is stored in the leaves. In a
database system with a large memory, it may be possible to cache all the internal nodes
of a B-tree in RAM, since they only represent 1% or 0.1% of the total data set. When this
happens, this means that a search in a B-tree involves a very fast search in RAM, through
the internal nodes, followed by a single external memory access to retrieve a leaf.
Exercise 14.1. Show what happens when the keys 1.5 and then 7.5 are added to the B-tree
in Figure 14.2.
Exercise 14.2. Show what happens when the keys 3 and then 4 are removed from the
B-tree in Figure 14.2.
Exercise 14.3. What is the maximum number of internal nodes in a B-tree that stores n
keys (as a function of n and B)?
Exercise 14.4. The introduction to this chapter claims that B-trees only need an internal
memory of size O(B + logB n). However, the implementation given here actually requires
more memory.
1. Show that the implementation of the add(x) and remove(x) methods given in this
chapter use an internal memory proportional to B logB n.
2. Describe how these methods could be modified to reduce their memory consumption
to O(B + logB n).
270
14. External Memory Searching 14.3. Discussion and Exercises
Exercise 14.5. Draw the credits used in the proof of Lemma 14.1 on the trees in Fig-
ures 14.6 and 14.7. Verify that (with 3 additional credits) it is possible to pay for the splits,
merges, and borrows and maintain the credit invariant.
Exercise 14.6. Design a modified version of a B-tree in which nodes can have anywhere
from B up to 3B children (and hence B − 1 up to 3B − 1 keys). Show that this new version of
B-trees performs only O(m/B) splits, merges, and borrows during a sequence of m opera-
tions. (Hint: For this to work, you will have to be more agressive with merging, sometimes
merging two nodes before it is strictly necessary.)
Exercise 14.7. In this exercise, you will design a modified method of splitting and merg-
ing in B-trees that asymptotically reduces the number of splits, borrows and merges by
considering up to 3 nodes at a time.
1. Let u be an overfull node and let v be a sibling immediately to the right of u. There
are two ways to fix the overflow at u:
(a) u can give some of its keys to v; or
(b) u can be split and the keys of u and v can be evenly distributed among u, v, and
the newly created node, w.
Show that this can always be done in such a way that, after the operation, each of the
(at most 3) affected nodes has at least B + αB keys and at most 2B − αB keys, for some
constant α > 0.
2. Let u be an underfull node and let v and w be siblings of u There are two ways to fix
the underflow at u:
(a) keys can be redistributed among u, v, and w; or
(b) u, v, and w can be merged into two nodes and the keys of u, v, and w can be
redistributed amongst these nodes.
Show that this can always be done in such a way that, after the operation, each of the
(at most 3) affected nodes has at least B + αB keys and at most 2B − αB keys, for some
constant α > 0.
3. Show that, with these modifications, the number of merges, borrows, and splits that
occur during m operations is O(m/B).
271
14. External Memory Searching 14.3. Discussion and Exercises
7
2 4 B-tree 10 12 14
0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 14 16 17
Figure 14.11: A B+-tree is a B-tree on top of a doubly-linked list of blocks.
Exercise 14.8. A B+-tree, illustrated in Figure 14.11 stores every key in a leaf and keeps
its leaves stored as a doubly-linked list. As usual, each leaf stores between B − 1 and 2B − 1
keys. Above this list is a standard B-tree that stores the largest value from each leaf but
the last.
1. Explain how to efficiently implement add(x), remove(x), and find(x) in a B+-tree.
2. Explain how to efficiently implement the findRange(x, y) method, that reports all
values greater than x and less than or equal to y, in a B+-tree.
3. Implement a class, BPlusTree, that implements find(x), add(x), remove(x), and findRange(x, y).
4. B+-trees duplicate some of the keys because they are stored both in the B-tree and in
the list. Explain why this duplication does not add up to much for large values of B.
272
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