208. Implement Trie (Prefix Tree)

Medium

A trie (pronounced as "try") or prefix tree is a tree data structure used to efficiently store and retrieve keys in a dataset of strings. There are various applications of this data structure, such as autocomplete and spellchecker.

Implement the Trie class:

• Trie() Initializes the trie object.
• void insert(String word) Inserts the string word into the trie.
• boolean search(String word) Returns true if the string word is in the trie (i.e., was inserted before), and false otherwise.
• boolean startsWith(String prefix) Returns true if there is a previously inserted string word that has the prefix prefix, and false otherwise.

Example 1:

Input
["Trie", "insert", "search", "search", "startsWith", "insert", "search"]
[[], ["apple"], ["apple"], ["app"], ["app"], ["app"], ["app"]]
Output
[null, null, true, false, true, null, true]

Explanation
Trie trie = new Trie();
trie.insert("apple");
trie.search("apple");   // return True
trie.search("app");     // return False
trie.startsWith("app"); // return True
trie.insert("app");
trie.search("app");     // return True

Constraints:

• 1 <= word.length, prefix.length <= 2000
• word and prefix consist only of lowercase English letters.
• At most 3 * 104 calls in total will be made to insert, search, and startsWith.

Solution

class Trie:
    END_CHARACTER = "#"

    def __init__(self):
        self.root = {}

    def insert(self, word: str) -> None:
        curr = self.root

        for c in word:
            if c not in curr:
                curr[c] = {}
            curr = curr[c]

        curr[self.END_CHARACTER] = {}

    def search(self, word: str) -> bool:
        curr = self.root

        for c in word:
            if c not in curr:
                return False
            curr = curr[c]

        return self.END_CHARACTER in curr

    def startsWith(self, prefix: str) -> bool:
        curr = self.root

        for c in prefix:
            if c not in curr:
                return False
            curr = curr[c]

        return True