I used to think that the trie as a complex data structure, but that’s not the case. Essentially, it’s an ordered n-ary tree structure.
The term ‘trie’ originates from “retrieval” and it’s also referred to as a prefix tree. Primarily, it’s employed for retrieval tasks.
One of its key advantages lies in its optimized search process. Unlike other data structures, it doesn’t necessitate traversing all children when seeking a node at any level. Instead, the child index is determined based on the node value.
Several applications benefit from the trie:
- Spell checkers, which involve searching for a given word.
- Auto-complete functionalities, where finding words with a matching prefix entails searching a subtree from the root and returning words with the specified prefix.
- Word games.
- T9 predictive text systems.
- Routing table searches, particularly for finding a route with the longest prefix match.
Link to my leetcode solution: https://leetcode.com/problems/implement-trie-prefix-tree/solutions/5021609/trie-to-manage-words-implementation-in-c-language/
