For the record

General Chatter
1

Coding a Patricia Tree from scratch SUCKS. Especially when you only have a day and half to do it.

Sorry, just had to get that off my chest.

2

I’ll eb the first : What’s a Patricia Tree?

3

Google is your friend.

4

Funny : right after reading Bluefoot’s post I googled Patricia Tree and linked to the first site.But I really didn’t get a straight answer.

PS:It’s ever closer … the day everyone will be reaved of the pleasure of arrogantly explaining something to another person who doens’t have a clue about what is beeing tlaked about…

5

It’s 5 to midnight here in the UK. I’m online trying to chill out. Could someone please tell me what that all means in bog standard english?

Ta.

6

[quote=“Shadow’s Guide to Modern English”]Patricia Tree:

  1. An algorithm commonly used in computer sciences to retrieve information.

  2. Bullshit.
    [/quote]

7

It’s a variation on a trie (not a typo).

An example of a trie would be a tree in which each node contains an array of pointers the size of, say, the alphabet. Initially each of the pointers points to NULL, but if you wanted to put the string “bob” for example into the trie, then the element of the array in the first node corresponding to ‘b’ would point to a new node. That new node would have its array element corresponding to ‘o’ point to another new node. That node’s array element corresponding to ‘b’ would point to yet another new node, and that node’s array element corresponding to the end of string character would point to whatever data you wanted associated with the string “bob.”

Now, if you wanted to insert “bill” into the tree, the first node would stay the same, but the second node would now have its array element corresponding to ‘i’ pointing to a new series of nodes in addition to the ‘o’ element.

In a patricia tree you basically eliminate all of the nodes in which only one element of the array points to something other than NULL. (sounds simple but makes things really freaking complicated).

Whew, yeah, hard to describe in words, but there it is. They suck.