Autocomplete

Problem & Motivation:

Efficiently support the autocomplete operation: given a prefix, return terms that start with that prefix, sorted by their weights.

Data & Approach:

• Started with simpler baseline implementations to establish correctness before focusing on performance.
• Implemented additional data structures to support faster lookup of all terms that share a given prefix.
• Ensured results were sorted correctly and returned in the proper order required by the specification.
• Used the provided tests, including corner cases and larger input files, to verify behavior.

Results:

• All implementations produced correct matches for prefix queries and returned results in the required sorted order.
• Observed clear differences in runtime depending on how each structure stored and accessed its terms.

Limitations:

Focused only on prefix-based matching and the operations defined in the project; does not support extensions such as approximate matching or full-text search.