A skip list is a data structure for storing a sorted list of items using a hierarchy of linked lists that connect increasingly sparse subsequences of the items. These auxiliary lists allow item lookup with efficiency comparable to balanced binary search trees (that is, with number of probes proportional to log n instead of n).
Each link of the sparser lists skips over many items of the full list in one step, hence the structure's name. These forward links may be added in a randomized way with a geometric / negative binomial distribution. Insert, search and delete operations are performed in logarithmic expected time. The links may also be added in a non-probabilistic way so as to guarantee amortized (rather than merely expected) logarithmic cost.
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Famous quotes containing the words skip and/or list:
“The lesson of value which money teaches, which the Author of the Universe has taken so much pains to teach us, we are inclined to skip altogether. As for the means of living, it is wonderful how indifferent men of all classes are about it, even reformers, so called,—whether they inherit, or earn, or steal it.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“Lovers, forget your love,
And list to the love of these,
She a window flower,
And he a winter breeze.”
—Robert Frost (1874–1963)