Rope (data structure)

For rope operations, the strings stored in nodes are assumed to be constant immutable objects in the typical nondestructive case, allowing for some copy-on-write behavior.

Leaf nodes are usually implemented as basic fixed-length strings with a reference count attached for deallocation when no longer needed, although other garbage collection methods can be used as well.

Finally 2 is greater than 1 but there is no left child, so the character at index 1 of the short string "na" (ie "n") is the answer.

(1-based index) A concatenation can be performed simply by creating a new root node with left = S1 and right = S2, which is constant time.

First, split the rope in three, divided by i-th and i+j-th character respectively, which extracts the string to delete in a separate node.

Advantages: Disadvantages: This table compares the algorithmic traits of string and rope implementations, not their raw speed.

Array-based strings have smaller overhead, so (for example) concatenation and split operations are faster on small datasets.

A simple rope built on the string of "Hello_my_name_is_Simon".
Figure 2.1: Example of index lookup on a rope.
Figure 2.2: Concatenating two child ropes into a single rope.
Figure 2.3: Splitting a rope in half.