This hash table uses less space than the items it stores

by williamkuszmaulon 10/9/2022, 4:12 PMwith 9 comments

by bicsion 10/10/2022, 1:47 AM

Isn’t this just a trie with only two levels? It seems to me that this technique isn’t particularly unknown, as it’s taught in most elementary CS courses.

by omegalulwon 10/10/2022, 1:48 AM

Maybe I'm missing something obvious, but if I insert all 32 bit keys, does that not take 32*2^32 space?

by perryizgr8on 10/10/2022, 6:04 PM

Kind of reminds me of a patricia trie, which is used to store routing tables. Each prefix exists as a path you take from one node to the other.

by marginalia_nuon 10/10/2022, 8:39 AM

Neat. I have an order-of-gigabytes hash table I'd love to shrink. Will experiment with this technique.

by pshirshovon 10/10/2022, 8:37 AM

This is just a classic combination of trie with hashmap.