Following up on my new year’s resolutions, I’ve been reading Taming Text and there’s quite a lot of interesting stuff there, one of them is the prefix tree.

Prefix trees (or tries) are a very efficient way to store collections of words so you can search for them by their prefixes (or suffixes if you revert the strings). You can use them to produce predictive lists for auto-complete solutions, dictionaries or any solution where you need to quickly access collections of words (or any type of value, as long as it’s keyed by a string) that start with a given prefix.

Defining the operations

Let’s see which operations we would like our trie to implement:

sealed trait Trie extends Traversable [ String ] { def append ( key : String ) def findByPrefix ( prefix : String ) : scala.collection.Seq [ String ] def contains ( word : String ) : Boolean def remove ( word : String ) : Boolean }

First, our trie is a Traversable[String] . The only thing Traversable[T] requires is a foreach method and we can easily implement one for our data structure. Being a Traversable[T] means our trie can interact with many of the other collections declared at the standard library (and this will be useful at our implementation later). When building new data structures in Scala, it’s often good to make sure they implement one of the base collection traits to simplify their interoperability with the standard library.

Then we have the methods we need for our trie, append to add a new word, findByPrefix to list all words known that start with the given prefix, contains to check if we have the word included at our structure and finally remove to remove a word from it.

The TrieNode data structure

The prefix tree, as the name implies, is built in the form of a tree data structure where every node represents either the empty char (the root node) or a single character in a word. The nodes here might or might not contain children and they can also be a word node, meaning that the path of characters that lead to this specific node form an actual word included at the prefix tree.

Let’s look at the structure:

private [ trie ] class TrieNode ( val char : Option [ Char ] = None , var word : Option [ String ] = None ) extends Trie { private [ trie ] val children : mutable.Map [ Char , TrieNode ] = new java . util . TreeMap [ Char , TrieNode ](). asScala }

Option twice!

Yes, that’s it. The very first node at our tree represents the empty char and since there is no empty char we just make it an Option object since it could then be a None to signal this is the empty char (if you don’t know what Option is, check this out ).

Also, the node might be a word node or not. What does it mean to be a word node? A word node is one that represents a word that was included in the prefix tree. Let’s look at the tree structure we have here:

j o a b ã o

Here we have a tree with two names, joão and joab, if we include another name like joão paulo, how do we remember that joão was a name as well?

To make sure we don’t forget the names, we have to also mark the tree nodes as word nodes, so we know that we have a word for that part of the tree even if this node has children that forms other words as well. So, that’s the reason why we have this second Option field at the TrieNode object.

The structure also maintains a list of it’s own children so we can continue traversing the tree structure. Given Scala does not provide a mutable TreeMap data structure, we create a Java TreeMap object and wrap it as if it was a Scala mutable map (with the asScala method from scala.collection.JavaConverters ). The use of TreeSet here helps us make the traversal in the tree follow the lexicographic order for the stored words.

append and foreach

We have to talk about these two methods together because it’s really hard to test one without the other. Let’s look at append first:

override def append ( key : String ) = { @tailrec def appendHelper ( node : TrieNode , currentIndex : Int ) : Unit = { if ( currentIndex == key . length ) { node . word = Some ( key ) } else { val char = key . charAt ( currentIndex ). toLower val result = node . children . getOrElseUpdate ( char , { new TrieNode ( Some ( char )) }) appendHelper ( result , currentIndex + 1 ) } } appendHelper ( this , 0 ) }

The first thing to take note here is that since we’re dealing with a recursive data structure, most of our methods will be implemented in a recursive way. The goal of the append method is to create a new node for every letter at our provided word that does not exist at our tree and then mark the last node as a word node.

For instance, imagine our tree only had john included:

j o h n

Once we try to include jane, the tree then becomes:

j a n e o h n

Both words share the j node, but then they diverge to their own subtrees to form their own words.

And since we’re dealing with recursion, we need to make sure our program won’t blow the stack by doing too many recursive calls. To do that, we’ve included the appendHelper function and tagged it with the @tailrec annotation that will require the method to be written in a way that makes it possible to apply the tail call optimization. The requirement is that the function has to call itself only at a tail position or that it can only call itself as the last operation in a branch.

This is exactly what we do, appendHelper is only called at the end of the else block and hence this method can be optimized and will not cause a stack overflow. Since this function is only usable by the append method, there’s no need to move it out, we can just have it here and not leak this implementation detail.

Now let’s look at the foreach function:

override def foreach [ U ]( f : String => U ) : Unit = { @tailrec def foreachHelper ( nodes : TrieNode* ) : Unit = { if ( nodes . size != 0 ) { nodes . foreach ( node => node . word . foreach ( f )) foreachHelper ( nodes . flatMap ( node => node . children . values ) : _ * ) } } foreachHelper ( this ) }

This is much simpler than append , all the code has to do is to take the function provided as parameter and call it on every word node. Since the word object is itself an Option , we can just call foreach at the Option object and it will do the right thing.

Again, we have an internal helper function that actually does the work and is made to be tail call optimized. It’s important to have the stop condition around the actual code here, to make sure we don’t even bother calling foreach if we don’t have any items, otherwise the code would loop forever.

The only interesting bit here is that we make the foreachHelper method take a vararg so we can call it with any number of parameters, this guarantees we can make it optimizable since we can make the first call with a single parameter and then call it again at the tail of the method with the child collection for the current node.

Here’s how these two methods are used:

Here’s how we use it:

"include a word" in { val trie = new TrieNode () trie . append ( "Maurício" ) trie must contain ( "Maurício" ) }

Here we can clearly see append in use, but where is foreach ?

foreach is in use at the contain matcher here. The contain matcher expects to find a collection where it can iterate and try to find the value we’re asking for. So, while we didn’t implement methods to figure out if we can find that item, the fact that we have implemented foreach and our Trie inherits from the Traversable trait provides us with a lot of functionality for free.

Finding words by their prefix

This is where the prefix tree really becomes useful, when you have to find words by their prefix. What we do here is we take a prefix and find every word that happens to match the prefix given, with a common hash structure you would have an O(1) (a single operation) to find a specific item by key, but you wouldn’t have a way to find all items that have a key that start with bar and this is where tries are useful.

Let’s look at our implementation:

override def findByPrefix ( prefix : String ) : scala.collection.Seq [ String ] = { @tailrec def helper ( currentIndex : Int , node : TrieNode , items : ListBuffer [ String ]) : ListBuffer [ String ] = { if ( currentIndex == prefix . length ) { items ++ node } else { node . children . get ( prefix . charAt ( currentIndex ). toLower ) match { case Some ( child ) => helper ( currentIndex + 1 , child , items ) case None => items } } } helper ( 0 , this , new ListBuffer [ String ]()) }

Now we are traversing towards a specific path of nodes in our tree, we only want the nodes that match the character we have at every index (all characeters are also lowercased). This could lead us to two cases, one where we have found the character (and then continue deeper) and one were one of the characters in the prefix does not match. As soon as we fail to match (the None case) we return. Otherwise, if we reach the end of the string we append all words under that node to the accumulator list.

Again, this is foreach and Traversable[T] in action. The ++ method at ListBuffer couldn’t possibly know what to do with our TrieNode object, but since we have extended the Traversable[T] trait and implemented foreach it can just use the methods available and pull all the items from that part of the tree and down. We don’t have to actually collect the items, the ++ method will already do the collection work for us and include the words at and below the current item.

Let’s look at an example with a trie that contains johann , john and joan :

j o a n # word node h # this is the current node a n n #word node n # word node

The node with the h is the one at if (currentIndex == prefix.length) when we make a search by joh , so, once we call foreach on it, this is the beginning of our tree now, only the words that are inside or below it will be returned. In this case, it would return john and johann but not joan because joan is not under the node that contains h .

And again the method uses an internal tail recursive helper function to do it’s job so we don’t blow the stack when trying to find all words that match the prefix.

A not very efficient contains

contains is implemented here mostly for completeness, but this is not exactly what you want to do with a prefix tree. If your actual use case is to figure out if whole words are inside a collection, a Set is a much better solution since it will usually require a single operation to give you this information while the worst case scenario for the trie is going to be O(N) where N is the size of the string you’re looking for.

Let’s look at the implementation:

override def contains ( word : String ) : Boolean = { @tailrec def helper ( currentIndex : Int , node : TrieNode ) : Boolean = { if ( currentIndex == word . length ) { node . word . isDefined } else { node . children . get ( word . charAt ( currentIndex ). toLower ) match { case Some ( child ) => helper ( currentIndex + 1 , child ) case None => false } } } helper ( 0 , this ) }

As you can see from the code, the best case will be O(1) (a single operation) if not even the first character is included in the tree, but if the word is included or if it is the prefix for a word that is included, the code performs as many operations as there are characters in the string.

A simple solution for a faster contains could be having a Set that holds all words inside the prefix tree, but this is beyond our scope here. Also, we could assume that this implementation could be simplified if we used the findByPrefix method and checked if the word was included in the resulting list. While this is indeed possible, it would require many more operations as findByPrefix finds all words at and below the prefix, while our contains only cares about the exact prefix match.

Still, we could abstract the way they traverse the tree as it is exactly the same and avoid repeating the traversal code, which is something we will do for the remove operation.

Removing items from the trie

This is arguably the most complicated piece of our trie implementation, removing an item from a trie is an expensive operation and at it’s worst case will require O(2N) operations where N is the size of the string being removed. The implementation is complicated because we must build a direct path of nodes until the actual word node we’re looking for and then we must travel this path backwards removing all the empty nodes, usually stopping when we find another word node.

Let’s look at an example:

j o h a n n #word node n # word node n a u r #word node

Here we have a tree with the names johann , john and john naur . If we remove john naur we have to remove the whole naur suffix but leave john untouched since we also have john as an actual name, so what needs to happen is:

reach that last r node;

node; walk up to u ;

; delete the reference to the r node at it’s children, this will make u not have any children and since it isn’t a word node it means that we have to remove it;

We keep repeating this until we reach the n that is the end of john , we again delete the reference to the n node for naur that is on it and since this node is a word node our delete process has to stop.

As you can see, deleting a word from our prefix tree is a quite complicated operation. As with contains , you’re better off if you build the tree and avoid removing items from it.

The delete operation is divided into two pieces, the first is to build the full path until the word node that is being deleted:

private [ trie ] def pathTo ( word : String ) : Option [ ListBuffer [ TrieNode ]] = { def helper ( buffer : ListBuffer [ TrieNode ], currentIndex : Int , node : TrieNode ) : Option [ ListBuffer [ TrieNode ]] = { if ( currentIndex == word . length ) { node . word . map ( word => buffer += node ) } else { node . children . get ( word . charAt ( currentIndex ). toLower ) match { case Some ( found ) => { buffer += node helper ( buffer , currentIndex + 1 , found ) } case None => None } } } helper ( new ListBuffer [ TrieNode ](), 0 , this ) }

We provide a list buffer to be filled with nodes and we then traverse the tree to buid the actual list, if we reach the end of the word we’re looking for and it is indeed a word node then we return the list, if it isn’t we just return None to signal that we haven’t found the full word we’re looking for. It’s important here that we only return if we do find a word node that matches, otherwise we could be deleting parts of other words.

Then, with the method that builds the path, we can implement the remove operation:

override def remove ( word : String ) : Boolean = { pathTo ( word ) match { case Some ( path ) => { var index = path . length - 1 var continue = true path ( index ). word = None while ( index > 0 && continue ) { val current = path ( index ) if ( current . word . isDefined ) { continue = false } else { val parent = path ( index - 1 ) if ( current . children . isEmpty ) { parent . children . remove ( word . charAt ( index - 1 ). toLower ) } index -= 1 } } true } case None => false } }

The remove method ended up being imperative mostly because it’s easier to understand, what we do here is first mark the last node (the word node) as not being a word node anymore and we keep going for the parent of the current node and removing the current node from it if it does not have any children. This is done because if the current node has no children and it isn’t a word node, it is part of the word we’re removing so it should be taken out as well.

The trie is done

And with this we end our trie (or prefix tree) implementation, as you can see from our implementations, if you need to quickly find words given a prefix, this is a great data structure to use, specially if most of what you will be doing is including words and then trying to find them.

If you actually need to match full words or you need to perform many inclusions and removals, this might not be the best option for you.