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This includes the memory space used by its inputs, called input space, and any other (auxiliary) memory it uses during execution, which is called auxiliary space. Similar to time complexity, space complexity is often expressed asymptotically in big O notation, such as (), (), (), (), etc., where n is a characteristic of the input influencing ...
For example, the best case for a simple linear search on a list occurs when the desired element is the first element of the list. Development and choice of algorithms is rarely based on best-case performance: most academic and commercial enterprises are more interested in improving average-case complexity and worst-case performance. Algorithms ...
A space–time trade off can be applied to the problem of data storage. If data is stored uncompressed, it takes more space but access takes less time than if the data were stored compressed (since compressing the data reduces the amount of space it takes, but it takes time to run the decompression algorithm). Depending on the particular ...
The time complexity of A* depends on the heuristic. In the worst case of an unbounded search space, the number of nodes expanded is exponential in the depth of the solution (the shortest path) d: O(b d), where b is the branching factor (the average number of successors per state). [24]
For example, a procedure that adds up all elements of a list requires time proportional to the length of the list, if the adding time is constant, or, at least, bounded by a constant. Linear time is the best possible time complexity in situations where the algorithm has to sequentially read its entire input.
In particular, most complexity classes consist of decision problems that can be solved by a Turing machine with bounded time or space resources. For example, the complexity class P is defined as the set of decision problems that can be solved by a deterministic Turing machine in polynomial time.
The most popular types of computational complexity are the time complexity of a problem equal to the number of steps that it takes to solve an instance of the problem as a function of the size of the input (usually measured in bits), using the most efficient algorithm, and the space complexity of a problem equal to the volume of the memory used ...
Although time and space are the most well-known complexity resources, any complexity measure can be viewed as a computational resource. Complexity measures are very generally defined by the Blum complexity axioms. Other complexity measures used in complexity theory include communication complexity, circuit complexity, and decision tree complexity.