Multi-way Tree Variants

Multi-way Tree Data Structures

Type	Description	Key Characteristic	Typical Use Case	Access Pattern	Memory Behavior	Notes
Ternary Tree	Up to three children	3-way branching	Expression trees	Traversal-based	Pointer-based	Generalization of binary
Ternary Search Tree	Char-based ternary tree	Space-efficient trie	Dictionaries	Character-based	Pointer-based	Faster than trie
K-ary Tree	K children per node	Configurable branching	Indexing, heaps	Traversal-based	Pointer-based	General tree form
And-Or Tree	Logical decision tree	AND/OR nodes	AI planning	Decision-based	Pointer-based	Problem solving
(a,b)-Tree	Generalized B-tree	Controlled balance	Databases	Logarithmic	Node-based	Basis of B-trees
Link/Cut Tree	Dynamic forest	Fast link & cut	Dynamic graphs	Path-based	Pointer-based	Splay-based
SPQR-Tree	Graph decomposition tree	Planarity testing	Graph algorithms	Structural	Node-based	Graph theory
Spaghetti Stack	Path-based structure	Tree-like stack	Program analysis	Stack-based	Pointer-based	Specialized
Disjoint-set	Union–find structure	Fast union/find	Connectivity	Representative-based	Array-based	Path compression
Fusion Tree	Word-parallel tree	Sub-log search	Theoretical CS	Bit-parallel	Node-based	Complex
Enfilade	Tree of intervals	Range editing	Text editors	Range-based	Tree-based	Rare
Exponential Tree	Multi-level structure	Fast queries	Theoretical CS	Logarithmic	Node-based	Research-focused
Fenwick Tree	Binary indexed tree	Prefix sums	Range queries	Indexed	Contiguous	Compact
Van Emde Boas Tree	Universe-based tree	Very fast ops	Integer sets	Bit-level	Recursive	Huge memory
Rose Tree	Arbitrary children	General tree	Hierarchical data	Traversal-based	Pointer-based	N-ary tree