Trie (CloudMonk.io)

Trie

A trie, also known as a prefix tree, is a specialized tree data structure that is used to store a dynamic set or associative array where the keys are usually strings. Unlike a binary tree, no node in the trie stores the key associated with that node; instead, its position in the trie defines the key with which it is associated. All the descendants of a node have a common prefix of the string associated with that node, and the root is associated with the empty string. Tries are particularly efficient for tasks like autocomplete, spell checking, and prefix lookup, offering faster search times and requiring less space when storing large sets of strings that share common prefixes. Each node in a trie may contain a number of pointers (or references) to its children, often one for each character of the alphabet in the case of strings, making traversal and insertion operations highly efficient for operations involving prefixes.