A Trie, also known as a prefix tree, is a specialized tree-like data structure used for efficient storage and retrieval of strings, particularly in dictionary lookups. Each node in a Trie represents a single character of a string, and paths through the tree correspond to prefixes of the strings stored within it. This allows for fast search operations, as the time complexity for searching for a word is , where is the length of the word, regardless of the number of words stored in the Trie.
Additionally, a Trie can support various operations, such as prefix searching, which enables it to efficiently find all words that share a common prefix. This is particularly useful for applications like autocomplete features in search engines. Overall, Trie-based dictionary lookups are favored for their ability to handle large datasets with quick search times while maintaining a structured organization of the data.
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