Efficient data structure for fast random access, search, insertion and deletion - arrays

I'm looking for a data structure (or structures) that would allow me keep me an ordered list of integers, no duplicates, with indexes and values in the same range.
I need four main operations to be efficient, in rough order of importance:
taking the value from a given index
finding the index of a given value
inserting a value at a given index
deleting a value at a given index
Using an array I have 1 at O(1), but 2 is O(N) and insertion and deletions are expensive (O(N) as well, I believe).
A Linked List has O(1) insertion and deletion (once you have the node), but 1 and 2 are O(N) thus negating the gains.
I tried keeping two arrays a[index]=value and b[value]=index, which turn 1 and 2 into O(1) but turn 3 and 4 into even more costly operations.
Is there a data structure better suited for this?

I would use a red-black tree to map keys to values. This gives you O(log(n)) for 1, 3, 4. It also maintains the keys in sorted order.
For 2, I would use a hash table to map values to keys, which gives you O(1) performance. It also adds O(1) overhead for keeping the hash table updated when adding and deleting keys in the red-black tree.

How about using a sorted array with binary search?
Insertion and deletion is slow. but given the fact that the data are plain integers could be optimized with calls to memcpy() if you are using C or C++. If you know the maximum size of the array, you can even avoid any memory allocations during the usage of the array, as you can preallocate it to the maximum size.
The "best" approach depends on how many items you need to store and how often you will need to insert/delete compared to finding. If you rarely insert or delete a sorted array with O(1) access to the values is certainly better, but if you insert and delete things frequently a binary tree can be better than the array. For a small enough n the array most likely beats the tree in any case.
If storage size is of concern, the array is better than the trees, too. Trees also need to allocate memory for every item they store and the overhead of the memory allocation can be significant as you only store small values (integers).
You may want to profile what is faster, the copying of the integers if you insert/delete from the sorted array or the tree with it's memory (de)allocations.

I don't know what language you're using, but if it's Java you can leverage LinkedHashMap or a similar Collection. It's got all of the benefits of a List and a Map, provides constant time for most operations, and has the memory footprint of an elephant. :)
If you're not using Java, the idea of a LinkedHashMap is probably still suitable for a usable data structure for your problem.

Use a vector for the array access.
Use a map as a search index to the subscript into the vector.
given a subscript fetch the value from the vector O(1)
given a key, use the map to find the subscript of the value. O(lnN)
insert a value, push back on the vector O(1) amortized, insert the subscript into
the map O(lnN)
delete a value, delete from the map O(lnN)

Howabout a Treemap? log(n) for the operations described.

I like balanced binary trees a lot. They are sometimes slower than hash tables or other structures, but they are much more predictable; they are generally O(log n) for all operations. I would suggest using a Red-black tree or an AVL tree.

How to achieve 2 with RB-trees? We can make them count their children with every insert/delete operations. This doesn't make these operationis last significantly longer. Then getting down the tree to find the i-th element is possible in log n time. But I see no implementation of this method in java nor stl.

If you're working in .NET, then according to the MS docs http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/f7fta44c.aspx
SortedDictionary and SortedList both have O(log n) for retrieval
SortedDictionary has O(log n) for insert and delete operations, whereas SortedList has O(n).
The two differ by memory usage and speed of insertion/removal. SortedList uses less memory than SortedDictionary. If the SortedList is populated all at once from sorted data, it's faster than SortedDictionary. So it depends on the situation as to which is really the best for you.
Also, your argument for the Linked List is not really valid as it might be O(1) for the insert, but you have to traverse the list to find the insertion point, so it's really not.

Related

What's the most efficient way to construct a new, sorted, array?

Background
Most questions around sorting talk about sorting an existing unsorted array. Is constructing a new array in a sorted order an equivalent problem or a different one? Here's an example that will clear things up:
Example
I'm generating N random numbers and want to insert them into a new array as I generate them, and I want the final array to be sorted.
Possible Solutions
Insertion Sort
My gut told me that putting each element in the correct place as it's generated would be fastest. This is accomplished by doing a binary search to find the correct point in the array to insert the new element. However, this is an insertion sort, which is known to be less efficient on large lists than other sorting algorithms.
Quicksort
Quicksort is generally thought of as the most efficient 'general' sorting algorithm, where nothing is known about the inputs to the array, and it's more efficient than insertion sort on large lists. Would it, therefore, be best to simply put the random numbers in the array in an unsorted order, and then sort them at the end with quicksort?
Other Solutions
Is there another algorithm I haven't thought of?
Most questions around sorting talk about sorting an existing unsorted array. Is constructing a new array in a sorted order an equivalent problem or a different one? 
It boils down to the same problem for random data, due to efficiency considerations.
Given random data, it's actually more efficient to first generate the random values into an array (unsorted) - O(n) time complexity - and then sort it with your favorite O(n log n) sort algorithm, making the entire operation O(2n log n) time complexity, and, depending on sort algorithm used, between O(1) and O(n) space complexity.
There is no way to beat that approach by "keeping an array sorted as it's constructed" for random data, because any approach will require exactly O(n) generations/insertions of the values, and at least O(n log n) comparisons/swaps/shifts - no matter which method, from the numerous mentioned in comments on the original question, is used. Note, as per a very useful comment on my original answer, the binary insertion sort variant suggested in the original question will likely degrade to O(n^2) time complexity, making it an inferior solution to just generating an array of values first and then sorting it.
Using a balanced tree just matches the time complexity of generating an array and then sorting it - but loses in space complexity, as trees have some overhead, compared to an array, to keep track of child nodes, etc. Also of note, trees are heap-allocated, and require a pointer dereference operation for accessing any child node - so even though the Big-O time complexity is equivalent to first generating an array of data and then sorting it, the real performance of the tree solution will be worse, as there's no data locality, and there's extra cost of pointer dereference. An additional consideration on balanced trees is that insertion cost into something like an AVL is quite high - that is, the n in AVL's O(n log n) insertion is not the same cost as n in an in-place sort of an array, due to necessary rotations of tree nodes to achieve balance. Just because Big-O is the same doesn't mean performance is the same. Even if you have an absolute need to be able to grab the data in a sorted order at some point during construction of the array, it might still be cheaper to just sort an array as you need it, unless you need it sorted at each insertion!
Note, this answer pertains to random data - it is possible, and even likely, to come up with a more efficient approach for "keeping an array sorted as it's constructed" if both the size and characteristics of the data are known, and follow some mathematical pattern, other than randomness; however, such approach would necessarily be overfit for the specific data set it relates to, rather than a general solution.
I recommend the Heapsort or Mergesort.
Heapsort is a comparison-based algorithm that uses a binary heap data structure to sort elements. It divides its input into a sorted and an unsorted region, and it iteratively shrinks the unsorted region by extracting the largest element and moving that to the sorted region.
Mergesort is a comparison-based algorithm that focuses on how to merge together two pre-sorted arrays such that the resulting array is also sorted.
If you want a true O(nlogn) and sorted "as it is constructed", I would recommend using a proper (tree) based data structure instead of array. You can use data structures like self balanced binary tree, AVL trees.

Why is array considered a data structure?

Why is array considered a data structure ? How is array a data structure in tetms of efficiency? Please explain by giving some examples
It's a data structure because it's collection of data and the tools to work it.
Primary features:
Extremely fast lookup by index.
Extremely fast index-order traversal.
Minimal memory footprint (not so with the optional modifications I mentioned).
Insertion is normally O(N) because you may need to copy the array when you reallocate the array to make space for new elements. However, you can bring the cost of appending down to amortized O(1) by over-allocating (i.e. by doubling the size of the array every time you reallocate).[1]
Deletion is O(N) because you will need to shift N/2 elements on average. You could keep track the number of unused elements at the start and end of the array to make removals from the ends O(1).[1]
Lookup by index is O(1). It's a simple pointer addition.
Lookup by value is O(N). If the data is ordered, one can use a binary search to reduce this to O(log N).
Keeping track of the first used element and the last used element would technically qualify as a different data structure because the functions to access the data structure are different, but it would still be called an array.

Comparing two String array in most efficient way

This problem is about searching a string in a master array (contains the list of all UIDs). The second array contains all the strings to be searched.
For example:
First array(Master List) contains: UID1 UID2 UID3... UID99
Second array contains: UID3 UID144 UID50
If a match is found in first array then 1 is returned otherwise 0 is return. So the output for the above example should be 101.
What could be the most efficient approach (targeting C) to solve the above keeping in mind that the traditional way dealing with this would be n^2!!!
sort the master string array and do binary search.
Efficient in terms of what?
I would go with #Trying's suggestion as a good compromise between decent running speed, low memory usage, and very (very!) low complexity of implementation.
Just use qsort() to sort the first master array in place, then use bsearch() to search it.
Assuming n elements in the master array and m in the second array, this should give O(m*log n) time complexity which seems decent.
Another option is to build a hash for the strings in the Master list, it's a single O(M) (assuming the lengths are O(1)), then assuming the hash is distributed evenly, searching a single element should take on average O(M/S), with S being the size the hash (the even distribution means that on average this is the amount of elements mapping into the same hash entry). You can further control the size to fine tune the trade off between space and efficiency
There are mainly two good approaches for this problem:
Use a binary search: a binary search requires the UIDs in the first array to be sorted and allows you to find a solution in O(log n) where n is the number of elements in the master array. The total complexity would be O(m log n) with m the number of elements to be searched.
Use a hashmap: You can store the elements of the master array in a hashmap (O(n)) and then check whether your elements of the second array are in the hashmap (O(m)). The total complexity would be O(n+m).
While the complexity of the second approach looks better, you must keep in mind that if your hash is bad, it could be O(m*n) in the worst case (but you would be very very unlikely). Also you would use more memory and the operations are also slower. In your case, I would use the first approach.

Contiguous mutable ordered list

This may or may not exist, but I'm looking for a way of storing a sorted list of integers that's contiguous in memory, reasonably compact, and allows for O(log n) amortized inserts and deletes. The various self-balancing binary search trees seem to have the insertion and deletion properties I want, but are implemented with pointers all over the place, which doesn't fit my use case very well. Any ideas?
(The implementation language will almost definitely be C, if it matters. If there are existing implementations of whatever you propose, all the better, but I'm fine with writing my own.)
A binary search tree can be implemented using an array.
Accroding to the fact that "reads happen more then writes", you can try to use dynamicaly-resized array + binary search on top of it. So, you will get O(log n) time access to elements (read), but you have to pay O(n) for insert/delete (O(log n) - search the proper place in array + O(n) - shift elemets to right or left). It is kind of slow, but this is the way how to work it out. Try to think about it.
One thing you might consider is a log-structured merge tree. You can store the levels contiguously one after the other, if you keep some metadata about where each level is located. You'd want an array where you can push and pop from the end (like a C++ std::vector).

What data structure to use here

Hashes provide an excellent mechanism to extract values corresponding to some given key in almost O(1) time. But it never preserves the order in which the keys are inserted. So is there any data structure which can simulate the best of array as well as hash, that is, return the value corresponding to a given key in O(1) time, as well as returning the nth value inserted in O(1) time? The ordering should be maintained, i.e., if the hash is {a:1,b:2,c:3}, and something like del hash[b] has been done, nth(2) should return {c,3}.
Examples:
hash = {};
hash[a] = 1;
hash[b] = 2;
hash[c] = 3;
nth(2); //should return 2
hash[d] = 4;
del hash[c];
nth(3); //should return 4, as 'd' has been shifted up
Using modules like TIE::Hash or similar stuff won't do, the onus is on me to develop it from scratch!
It depends on how much memory may be allocated for this data structure. For O(N) space there are several choices:
It's easy to get a data structure with O(1) time for each of these operations: "get value by key", "get nth value inserted", "insert" - but only when "delete" time is O(N). Just use combination of a hash map and an array, as explained by ppeterka.
Less obvious, but still simple is O(sqrt N) for "delete" and O(1) for all other operations.
A little bit more complicated is to "delete" in O(N1/4), O(N1/6), or, in general case, in O(M*N1/M) time.
It's, most likely, impossible to decrease "delete" time to O(log N) while retaining O(1) for other operations. But it is possible if you agree to O(log N) time for every operation. Solutions, based on binary search tree or on a skip list, allow it. One option is order statistics tree. You can augment every node of a binary search tree with a counter, storing number of elements in the sub-tree under this node; then use it to find nth node. Other option is to use Indexable skiplist. One more option is to use O(M*N1/M) solution with M=log(N).
And I don't think you can get O(1) "delete" without increasing time for other operations even more.
If unlimited space is available, you can do every operation in O(1) time.
O(sqrt N) "delete"
You can use a combination of two data structures to find value by key and to find value by its insertion order. First one is a hash map (mapping key to both value and a position in other structure). Second one is tiered vector, which maps position to both value and key.
Tiered vector is a relatively simple data structure, it may be easily developed from scratch. Main idea is to split array into sqrt(N) smaller arrays, each of size sqrt(N). Each small array needs only O(sqrt N) time to shift values after deletion. And since each small array is implemented as circular buffer, small arrays can exchange a single element in O(1) time, which allows to complete "delete" operation in O(sqrt N) time (one such exchange for each sub-array between deleted value and first/last sub-array). Tiered vector allows insertion into the middle also in O(sqrt N), but this problem does not require it, so we can just append a new element at the end in O(1) time. To access element by its position, we need to determine starting position of circular buffer for sub-array, where element is stored, then get this element from circular buffer; this needs also O(1) time.
Since hash map remembers a position in tiered vector for each of its keys, it should be updated when any element in tiered vector changes position (O(sqrt N) hash map updates for each "delete").
O(M*N1/M) "delete"
To optimize "delete" operation even more, you can use approach, described in this answer. It deletes elements lazily and uses a trie to adjust element's position, taking into account deleted elements.
O(1) for every operation
You can use a combination of three data structures to do this. First one is a hash map (mapping key to both value and a position in the array). Second one is an array, which maps position to both value and key. And third one is a bit set, one bit for each element of the array.
"Insert" operation just adds one more element to the array's end and inserts it into hash map.
"Delete" operation just unsets corresponding bit in the bit set (which is initialized with every bit = 1). Also it deletes corresponding entry from hash map. (It does not move elements of array or bit set). If, after "delete" the bit set has more than some constant proportion of elements deleted (like 10%), the whole data structure should be re-created from scratch (this allows O(1) amortized time).
"Find by key" is trivial, only hash map is used here.
"Find by position" requires some pre-processing. Prepare a 2D array. One index is the position we search. Other index is current state of our data structure, the bit set, reinterpreted as an index. Calculate population count for each prefix of every possible bit set and store prefix length, indexed by both population count and the bit set itself. Having this 2D array ready, you can perform this operation by first indexing by position and current "state" in this 2D array, then by indexing in the array with values.
Time complexity for every operation is O(1) (for insert/delete it is O(1) amortized). Space complexity is O(N 2N).
In practice, using whole bit set to index an array limits allowed value of N by pointer size (usually 64), even more it is limited by available memory. To alleviate this, we can split both the array and the bit set into sub-arrays of size N/C, where C is some constant. Now we can use a smaller 2D array to find nth element in each sub-array. And to find nth element in the whole structure, we need additional structure to record number of valid elements in each sub-array. This is a structure of constant size C, so every operation on it is also O(1). This additional structure may me implemented as an array, but it is better to use some logarithmic-time structure like indexable skiplist. After this modification, time complexity for every operation is still O(1); space complexity is O(N 2N/C).
Now, that the question is clear for me too (better late than never...) here are my proposals:
you could maintain two hashes: one with keys, and one with the insert order. this however is very ugly and slow to maintain when deleting, and inserting in between. This would give the same almost O(1) time needed to access the elements both ways.
you could use a hash for the keys, and maintain an array for the insert order. this one is a lot nicer than the hash type, deleting is still not very fast, but I think still a lot quicker than with the two hash approach. This also gives true O(1) on accessing the nth element.
At first, I misunderstood the question, and gave a solution that gives O(1) key lookup, and O(n) lookup of nth element:
In Java, there is the LinkedHashMap for this particular task.
I think however that if someone finds this page, this might not be totally useless, so I leave it here...
There is no data structure in O(1) for everything you cited. In particular any data structure with random dynamic insertion/deletion in the middle AND sorted/indexed access cannot have maintenance time lower than O(log N), to maintain such a dynamic collection you have to resort either on the operator "less than" (binary thus O(log2 N)) or some computed organization (typical O(sqrt N), by using sqrt(N) sub arrays). Note that O(sqrt N)>O(log N).
So, no.
You might reach O(1) for everything including keeping order with the linked list+hash map, and if access is mostly sequential, you could cache nth(x), to access nth(x+/-1) in O(1).
I guess only a plain array will give you O(1), best variant is to look for solution which gives O(n) in worst scenario. You can also use a really really bad approach - using key as index in plain array. I guess there is a way to transform any key to index in plain array.
std::string memoryMap[0x10000];
int key = 100;
std::string value = "Hello, World!";
memoryMap[key] = value;

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