Trie-Compressed Intersectable Sets

Abstract

We introduce space- and time-efficient algorithms and data structures for the offline set intersection problem. We show that a sorted integer set $S\subseteq [0..u)$ of $n$ elements can be represented using compressed space while supporting $k$-way intersections in adaptive $O(k\delta \lg (u/\delta ))$ time, $\delta$ being the alternation measure introduced by Barbay and Kenyon. Our experimental results suggest that our approaches are competitive in practice, outperforming the most efficient alternatives (Partitioned Elias-Fano indexes, Roaring Bitmaps, and Recursive Universe Partitioning (RUP)) in several scenarios, offering in general relevant space-time trade-offs.