Monotone minimal perfect hashing: searching a sorted table with O(1) accesses

A minimal perfect hash function maps a set S of n keys into the set { 0, 1,..., n − 1} bijectively. Classical results state that minimal perfect hashing is possible in constant time using a structure occupying space close to the lower bound of log e bits per element. Here we consider the problem of monotone minimal perfect hashing, in which the bijection is required to preserve the lexicographical ordering of the keys. A monotone minimal perfect hash function can be seen as a very weak form of index that provides ranking just on the set S (and answers randomly outside of S). Our goal is to minimise the description size of the hash function: we show that, for a set S of n elements out of a universe of 2w elements, O(n log logw) bits are sufficient to hash monotonically with evaluation time O(logw). Alternatively, we can get space O(n logw) bits with O(1) query time. Both of these data structures improve a straightforward construction with O(n logw) space and O(logw) query time. As a consequence, it is possible to search a sorted table with O(1) accesses to the table (using additional O(n log logw) bits). Our results are based on a structure (of independent interest) that represents a trie in a very compact way, but admits errors. As a further application of the same structure, we show how to compute the predecessor (in the sorted order of S) of an arbitrary element, using O(1) accesses in expectation and an index of O(n logw) bits, improving the trivial result of O(nw) bits. This implies an efficient index for searching a blocked memory.