Burst tries: A fast, efficient data structure for string keys

Abstract

Many applications depend on efficient management of large sets of distinct strings in memory. For example, during index construction for text databases a record is held for each distinct word in the text, containing the word itself and information such as counters. We propose a new data structure, the burst trie, that has significant advantages over existing options for such applications: it uses about the same memory as a binary search tree; it is as fast as a trie; and, while not as fast as a hash table, a burst trie maintains the strings in sorted or near-sorted order. In this paper we describe burst tries and explore the parameters that govern their performance. We experimentally determi..