Exploring the duality between skip lists and binary search trees

Authors:
Brian C. Dean;Zachary H. Jones
Affiliations:
Clemson University, Clemson, SC;Clemson University, Clemson, SC
Venue:
ACM-SE 45 Proceedings of the 45th annual southeast regional conference
Year:
2007

Citing 6
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Abstract

Although skip lists were introduced as an alternative to balanced binary search trees (BSTs), we show that the skip list can be interpreted as a type of randomly-balanced BST whose simplicity and elegance is arguably on par with that of today's most popular BST balancing mechanisms. In this paper, we provide a clear, concise description and analysis of the "BST" interpretation of the skip list, and compare it to similar randomized BST balancing mechanisms. In addition, we show that any rotation-based BST balancing mechanism can be implemented in a simple fashion using a skip list.