← Trie

Pattern Recognition Drill

#107 — Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)

Medium Tries

The Problem

Implement a trie with insert, search, and startsWith methods.

What approach would you use?

Think about it before scrolling down.

Key Signals

Trie

Build tree of characters. Insert walks/creates nodes. Search checks end flag. startsWith just walks. O(L) per op.

Alt: Hash Map

Store all words in a set (search is O(L)), but startsWith requires scanning all words.

Common Trap

Don't forget the `end_of_word` boolean flag — search and startsWith differ only by this check.

← #106