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Question:
Published on: 3 December, 2024

What is a Judy array?

Answer:

Judy array is a complex but very fast associative array data structure for storing and looking up values using integer or string keys. Unlike normal arrays, Judy arrays may be sparse; that is,they may have large ranges of unassigned indices. 

Judy arrays are dynamic and can grow or shrink as elements are added to, or removed from, the array. The memory used by Judy arrays is nearly proportional to the number of elements in the Judy array.

Judy arrays are designed to minimize the number of expensive cache-line fills from RAM, and so the algorithm contains much complex logic to avoid cache misses as often as possible. Due to these cache optimizations,Judy arrays are fast, especially for very large datasets. On data sets that are sequential or nearly sequential, Judy arrays can even outperform hash tables, since, unlike hash tables, the internal tree structure of Judy arrays maintains the ordering of the keys.

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