The.Algorithm.Design.Manual.Springer-Verlag.1998

War Story: String 'em Up
The take home lessons for programmers from Figure should be apparent. We isolated a single
operation (dictionary string search) that was being performed repeatedly and optimized the data structure
we used to support it. We started with a simple implementation (binary search trees) in the hopes that it
would suffice, and then used profiling to reveal the trouble when it didn't. When an improved dictionary
structure still did not suffice, we looked deeper into what kinds of queries we were performing, so that
we could identify an even better data structure. Finally, we didn't give up until we had achieved the level
of performance we needed. In algorithms, as in life, persistence usually pays off.
Figure: Run times (in seconds) for the SBH simulation using various data structures
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