What is a Trie, and how do I implement it in TypeScript?
A Trie is a tree-like data structure used to store strings efficiently. You can implement a Trie in TypeScript using nodes with character-based children and end-of-word markers.
A Trie, also known as a prefix tree, is a specialized data structure used for efficiently storing and searching strings. Each node in a Trie represents a character of the string, and strings that share a common prefix share the same path in the tree. In TypeScript, a Trie can be implemented by creating nodes that store a character and references to their children. Each node also typically has an isEndOfWord
flag to mark the end of a word. Tries are widely used in applications like autocomplete, spell checkers, and IP routing. They allow for fast lookups, insertions, and deletions of words, with time complexity proportional to the length of the word (O(L), where L is the word length). By learning how to implement a Trie in TypeScript, you'll gain valuable insights into efficient data storage and retrieval for text-based data.