The Height of List-tries and TST

Abstract

We characterize the asymptotics of heights of the trees of de la Briandais and the ternary search trees (TST) of Bentley and Sedgewick. Our proof is based on a new analysis of the structure of tries that distinguishes the bulk of the tree, called the $\textit{core}$, and the long trees hanging down the core, called the $\textit{spaghettis}$.

Keywords

• tries
• branching process
• height
• de la briandais
• tst
• [info.info-ds] computer science [cs]/data structures and algorithms [cs.ds]
• [info.info-dm] computer science [cs]/discrete mathematics [cs.dm]
• [math.math-co] mathematics [math]/combinatorics [math.co]
• [info.info-cg] computer science [cs]/computational geometry [cs.cg]