Re: Skip lists and splay trees

Re: Skip lists and splay trees

[Colin Plumb]

Jamie Lokier (lkd@tantalophile.demon.co.uk) wrote:
> I would definitely recommend a skip list or splay tree. Both are very
> fast. Both are very short code. (_Much_ shorter and simpler than the
> AVL code was).
> 
> The skip list has the advantage that it's fairly simple to code and
> nothing is written (cache advantage).
> 
> The splay tree has the advantage that it automatically caches the
> recently used entries. So much so that there's no need for a one entry
> cache in front of it.

Skip lists have the notable disadvantage that nodes are variable-sized
(due to the random number of pointers in them), which complicates
memory management, a great kernel preoccupation.

Splay trees are amenable to a number of heuristics like self-adjusting
lists, like move-to-front or move-forward-one.  They might be worth
playing with a bit.
-- 
	-Colin

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Re: Skip lists and splay trees

[Richard Jones]

Those of you wondering what splay trees are might want
to look at a on-line demo, at:

http://gs213.sp.cs.cmu.edu/prog/splay

For balance, there are papers on skiplists at:

ftp://ftp.cs.umd.edu/pub/skipLists/

Rich.

-- 
Richard Jones rjones@orchestream.com Tel: +44 171 598 7557 Fax: 460 4461
Orchestream Ltd.  125 Old Brompton Rd. London SW7 3RP PGP: www.four11.com
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