Skip List vs. Binary Search Tree

Question

I recently came across the data structure known as a skip list. It seems to have very similar behavior to a binary search tree.

Why would you ever want to use a ski

Answer 1

Skip Lists do have the advantage of lock stripping. But, the runt time depends on how the level of a new node is decided. Usually this is done using Random(). On a dictionary of 56000 words, skip list took more time than a splay tree and the tree took more time than a hash table. The first two could not match hash table's runtime. Also, the array of the hash table can be lock stripped in a concurrent way too.

Skip List and similar ordered lists are used when locality of reference is needed. For ex: finding flights next and before a date in an application.

An inmemory binary search splay tree is great and more frequently used.

Skip List Vs Splay Tree Vs Hash Table Runtime on dictionary find op