Splay trees: a reweighing lemma and a proof of competitiveness vs. dynamic balanced trees

  • Authors:
  • George F. Georgakopoulos

  • Affiliations:
  • Department of Computer Science, University of Crete, Knossou Av., GR-71409 Heraklion, Crete, Greece

  • Venue:
  • Journal of Algorithms
  • Year:
  • 2004

Quantified Score

Hi-index 0.00

Visualization

Abstract

We give a new lemma (dynamic reweighing) about splay trees and we define a class of dynamically self-adjusted trees (parametrically balanced) wide enough to include BB(α), AVL, rank-balanced and B-trees. Using our lemma we prove that splay trees are competitive to any such class of dynamic trees-noticing that so far splay trees had been proven competitive only w.r.t, static structures like trees and sorted tables with a finger, or exponentially faster than dynamic linear structures like a 'move-to-front' self-adjusting list. (Note: A class of dynamic trees achieving the dynamic finger property can be designed, and splay trees have been shown to have this property also.) Finally, we extend these results to generalized splay trees.