We present a compressed representation of tries based on top tree compression [ICALP 2013] that works on a standard, comparison-based, pointer machine model of computation and supports efficient prefix search queries. Namely, we show how to preprocess a set of strings of total length n over an alphabet of size sigma into a compressed data structure of worst-case optimal size O(n/log_sigma n) that given a pattern string P of length m determines if P is a prefix of one of the strings in time O(min(m log sigma,m + log n)). We show that this query time is in fact optimal regardless of the size of the data structure.
Existing solutions either use Omega(n) space or rely on word RAM techniques, such as tabulation, hashing, address arithmetic, or word-level parallelism, and hence do not work on a pointer machine. Our result is the first solution on a pointer machine that achieves worst-case o(n) space. Along the way, we develop several interesting data structures that work on a pointer machine and are of independent interest. These include an optimal data structures for random access to a grammar-compressed string and an optimal data structure for a variant of the level ancestor problem
