From: Patrick Put <patrick.put@...>
Date: 2009-02-02T20:00:18+09:00
Subject: Quicker finding strings? Alternative for array, hash, set?

I've been searching for this information already, but cannot really find
the answer I'm looking for.

I have to find values in a list of some 40,000 strings. Putting all
these in an array is not likely to be the quickest way.... and it isn't.
A set seems to be faster already. Maybe using a map where I only use the
keys is also faster. But I'm wondering: is there no such thing as a tree
to store and retrieve items in a fast way?

If I remember well, for n elements in a list it should take log(n) steps
then, where it takes n/2 just going through an array if I only want to
pick up the element. In my situation it is much closer to n because most
of the times the value is NOT in the list.

Any ideas?
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