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what do you mean by all names in Sunnyvale - an example can help

"All names in Sunnyvale" means the names of all people living in Sunnyvale. Could be aby other city as well. Like a telephone directory or Social Security number. Name and then their info a hash and key of hash table or Tree with leaf as their info. If tree what kind of tree. Also I feel it was not hard and fast. I gave them a combination of Hash table and tree. Hash table for 26 keys, key being first letter...later I merged unfamiliar letters together for better balancing and went on improving.

Best to use Tries, or (patricia tries, compressed tries), search time o(m),, m = length of string, even less in patricia tries. They are much better than Hash or BST for most of cases., Search is a constant o(m).