Trie (Prefix Tree)

Concepts: pyTrie, pyAutocomplete, pyPrefixTree

A trie is a tree where each node represents a character, and the path from root to a node spells a prefix. Each node can have up to 26 children (for lowercase English) or any number of children for other character sets. Tries make prefix-based lookups O(k) where k is the prefix length, regardless of how many strings are stored. For a data engineering context, the key applications are autocomplete in query editors, IP prefix matching in network routing, and hierarchical key-space routing in distributed systems. Python Trie with Dict of Dicts