Triemaps that match

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of trie data structures for pattern matching on tree-structured keys in statically typed functional programming, offering a new perspective and practical design pattern.

Contribution

It introduces a novel approach to pattern matching with trie structures in functional programming, bridging a gap in existing research.

Findings

Provides a new pattern matching technique with trie structures

Demonstrates good runtime performance in practical applications

Bridges research gap between theorem proving and functional programming

Abstract

The trie data structure is a good choice for finite maps whose keys are data structures (trees) rather than atomic values. But what if we want the keys to be patterns, each of which matches many lookup keys? Efficient matching of this kind is well studied in the theorem prover community, but much less so in the context of statically typed functional programming. Doing so yields an interesting new viewpoint -- and a practically useful design pattern, with good runtime performance.