Question

I want to store some values in a balanced binary search tree using C#. I looked through the collections in the generics namespace and I haven’t found an equivalent of the stl set.

What generic collection can I use? (I don’t want to store key/value pairs… just values.)

Answer 1

1. If you require sorted set, use SortedDictionary<T,U>. This is implemented using a binary search tree. Admittedly, you will be using 64-bits per entry because you are storing a key-value pair underneath. You can write a wrapper around it like this:

   class Set<T> : SortedDictionary<T, bool> {     public void Add(T item)     {         this.Add(item, true);     } } 

2. If you don’t require a sorted set, use HashSet<T>.

3. Otherwise, check out C5 Generic Collection Library. In particular TreeSet<T>. It is a red-black tree and only stores the values.