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Is there any balance condition for the rope?

I just read the Rope article, and didn't find any balance condition for the rope. Does it means, that any binary tree with short strings in leaves, is a rope?

Solution

  • Does it means, that any binary tree with short strings in leaves, is a rope?

    Yes. Depending on the implementation there can be balancing strategies but this is by no means necessary.

    Often, applications which use ropes stil expect relatively few nodes so the overhead of having a balance strategy isn’t worth it, both in terms of effort to implement, and in the (small) runtime overhead which it entails.