Question

Given the following…

(def inTree
 '((1 2)
   (1 2 3)
   (1 2 4 5 9)
   (1 2 4 10 15)
   (1 2 4 20 25)))

How would you transform it to this trie?

(def outTrie
 '(1
    (2 ()
       (3 ())
       (4 (5
            (9 ()))
          (10
            (15 ()))
          (20
            (25 ()))))))

Answer 1

Here’s a cleaned up solution. This fixes a bug Brian’s add-to-trie method since it’s currently dependent upon you inserting the seqs in increasing-length order. It also allows querying the trie by prefix, which is a common use case.

Note the memory usage here is higher since it stores the values in the leaf nodes of the trie so you can perform searches.

(defn add-to-trie [trie x]
  (assoc-in trie x (merge (get-in trie x) {:val x :terminal true})))

(defn in-trie? [trie x]
  "Returns true if the value x exists in the specified trie."
  (:terminal (get-in trie x) false))

(defn prefix-matches [trie prefix]
  "Returns a list of matches with the prefix specified in the trie specified."
  (keep :val (tree-seq map? vals (get-in trie prefix))))

(defn build-trie [coll]
  "Builds a trie over the values in the specified seq coll."
  (reduce add-to-trie {} coll))