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Rope (data structure)

Data structure for storing strings

  • 18 min read
  • 3 chapters

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Through Computer programming, Data structure and String (computer science)

Description

A rope is a type of binary tree where each leaf (end node) holds a string of manageable size and length (also known as a weight), and each node further up the tree holds the sum of the lengths of all the leaves in its left subtree. A node with two children thus divides the whole string into two parts: the left subtree stores the first part of the string, the right subtree stores the second part of the string, and a node's weight is the length of the first part.

For rope operations, the strings stored in nodes are assumed to be constant immutable objects in the typical nondestructive case, allowing for some copy-on-write behavior. Leaf nodes are usually implemented as basic fixed-length strings with a reference count attached for deallocation when no longer needed, although other garbage collection methods can be used as well.

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