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Practical Bit Vectors Supporting Constant Time Rank and Select in Optimal Space

Authors Florian Kurpicz , Niccolò Rigi-Luperti , Peter Sanders

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Subject Classification

ACM Subject Classification
  • Theory of computation → Data compression
  • Theory of computation → Data structures design and analysis
Keywords
  • succinct data structures
  • bit vectors
  • rank and select

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Abstract

Bit vectors with support for fast rank and select are a fundamental building block for compressed data structures. We close a gap between theory and practice by mapping a design space of promising data structures, analyzing it, and experimentally evaluating a promising region. The result are implementations of rank and select data structures for bit vectors with worst-case constant query time, leading practical performance, and a space-overhead reaching below 1 %. For difficult inputs, we are ≈ 8 times faster than the best previous implementations.

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Florian Kurpicz, Niccolò Rigi-Luperti, and Peter Sanders. Practical Bit Vectors Supporting Constant Time Rank and Select in Optimal Space. In 34th Annual European Symposium on Algorithms (ESA 2026). Leibniz International Proceedings in Informatics (LIPIcs), Volume 388, pp. 8:1-8:21, Schloss Dagstuhl – Leibniz-Zentrum für Informatik (2026) https://doi.org/10.4230/LIPIcs.ESA.2026.8

Author Details

Florian Kurpicz
  • University of Münster, Germany
Niccolò Rigi-Luperti
  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany
Peter Sanders
  • Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany

Supplementary Materials

References

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