Weighted dynamic finger in binary search trees

It is shown that the online binary search tree data structure GreedyASS performs asymptotically as well on a sufficiently long sequence of searches as any static binary search tree where each search begins from the previous search (rather than the root). This bound is known to be equivalent to assigning each item $i$ in the search tree a positive weight $w_i$ and bounding the search cost of an item in the search sequence $s_1,\ldots,s_m$ by $$O\left(1+ \log \frac{\displaystyle \sum_{\min(s_{i-1},s_i) \leq x \leq \max(s_{i-1},s_i)}w_x}{\displaystyle \min(w_{s_i},w_{s_{i-1}})} \right)$$ amortized. This result is the strongest finger-type bound to be proven for binary search trees. By setting the weights to be equal, one observes that our bound implies the dynamic finger bound. Compared to the previous proof of the dynamic finger bound for Splay trees, our result is significantly shorter, stronger, simpler, and has reasonable constants.Comment: An earlier version of this work appeared in the Proceedings of the Twenty-Seventh Annual ACM-SIAM Symposium on Discrete Algorithm

Finger Search in Grammar-Compressed Strings

Grammar-based compression, where one replaces a long string by a small context-free grammar that generates the string, is a simple and powerful paradigm that captures many popular compression schemes. Given a grammar, the random access problem is to compactly represent the grammar while supporting random access, that is, given a position in the original uncompressed string report the character at that position. In this paper we study the random access problem with the finger search property, that is, the time for a random access query should depend on the distance between a specified index $f$, called the \emph{finger}, and the query index $i$. We consider both a static variant, where we first place a finger and subsequently access indices near the finger efficiently, and a dynamic variant where also moving the finger such that the time depends on the distance moved is supported. Let $n$ be the size the grammar, and let $N$ be the size of the string. For the static variant we give a linear space representation that supports placing the finger in $O(\log N)$ time and subsequently accessing in $O(\log D)$ time, where $D$ is the distance between the finger and the accessed index. For the dynamic variant we give a linear space representation that supports placing the finger in $O(\log N)$ time and accessing and moving the finger in $O(\log D + \log \log N)$ time. Compared to the best linear space solution to random access, we improve a $O(\log N)$ query bound to $O(\log D)$ for the static variant and to $O(\log D + \log \log N)$ for the dynamic variant, while maintaining linear space. As an application of our results we obtain an improved solution to the longest common extension problem in grammar compressed strings. To obtain our results, we introduce several new techniques of independent interest, including a novel van Emde Boas style decomposition of grammars

In pursuit of the dynamic optimality conjecture

In 1985, Sleator and Tarjan introduced the splay tree, a self-adjusting binary search tree algorithm. Splay trees were conjectured to perform within a constant factor as any offline rotation-based search tree algorithm on every sufficiently long sequence---any binary search tree algorithm that has this property is said to be dynamically optimal. However, currently neither splay trees nor any other tree algorithm is known to be dynamically optimal. Here we survey the progress that has been made in the almost thirty years since the conjecture was first formulated, and present a binary search tree algorithm that is dynamically optimal if any binary search tree algorithm is dynamically optimal.Comment: Preliminary version of paper to appear in the Conference on Space Efficient Data Structures, Streams and Algorithms to be held in August 2013 in honor of Ian Munro's 66th birthda

Parallel Finger Search Structures

In this paper we present two versions of a parallel finger structure FS on p processors that supports searches, insertions and deletions, and has a finger at each end. This is to our knowledge the first implementation of a parallel search structure that is work-optimal with respect to the finger bound and yet has very good parallelism (within a factor of O(log p)^2) of optimal). We utilize an extended implicit batching framework that transparently facilitates the use of FS by any parallel program P that is modelled by a dynamically generated DAG D where each node is either a unit-time instruction or a call to FS. The work done by FS is bounded by the finger bound F_L (for some linearization L of D), i.e. each operation on an item with distance r from a finger takes O(log r+1) amortized work. Running P using the simpler version takes O((T_1+F_L)/p + T_infty + d * ((log p)^2 + log n)) time on a greedy scheduler, where T_1, T_infty are the size and span of D respectively, and n is the maximum number of items in FS, and d is the maximum number of calls to FS along any path in D. Using the faster version, this is reduced to O((T_1+F_L)/p + T_infty + d *(log p)^2 + s_L) time, where s_L is the weighted span of D where each call to FS is weighted by its cost according to F_L. FS can be extended to a fixed number of movable fingers. The data structures in our paper fit into the dynamic multithreading paradigm, and their performance bounds are directly composable with other data structures given in the same paradigm. Also, the results can be translated to practical implementations using work-stealing schedulers

The Landscape of Bounds for Binary Search Trees

Binary search trees (BSTs) with rotations can adapt to various kinds of structure in search sequences, achieving amortized access times substantially better than the Theta(log n) worst-case guarantee. Classical examples of structural properties include static optimality, sequential access, working set, key-independent optimality, and dynamic finger, all of which are now known to be achieved by the two famous online BST algorithms (Splay and Greedy). (...) In this paper, we introduce novel properties that explain the efficiency of sequences not captured by any of the previously known properties, and which provide new barriers to the dynamic optimality conjecture. We also establish connections between various properties, old and new. For instance, we show the following. (i) A tight bound of O(n log d) on the cost of Greedy for d-decomposable sequences. The result builds on the recent lazy finger result of Iacono and Langerman (SODA 2016). On the other hand, we show that lazy finger alone cannot explain the efficiency of pattern avoiding sequences even in some of the simplest cases. (ii) A hierarchy of bounds using multiple lazy fingers, addressing a recent question of Iacono and Langerman. (iii) The optimality of the Move-to-root heuristic in the key-independent setting introduced by Iacono (Algorithmica 2005). (iv) A new tool that allows combining any finite number of sound structural properties. As an application, we show an upper bound on the cost of a class of sequences that all known properties fail to capture. (v) The equivalence between two families of BST properties. The observation on which this connection is based was known before - we make it explicit, and apply it to classical BST properties. (...

Cross-Document Pattern Matching

We study a new variant of the string matching problem called cross-document string matching, which is the problem of indexing a collection of documents to support an efficient search for a pattern in a selected document, where the pattern itself is a substring of another document. Several variants of this problem are considered, and efficient linear-space solutions are proposed with query time bounds that either do not depend at all on the pattern size or depend on it in a very limited way (doubly logarithmic). As a side result, we propose an improved solution to the weighted level ancestor problem