searching algorithm

[Michael Bentley]

>
> Call me dense, but how does one do this in Python - which doesn't have
> pointers? Dictionaries with dictionaries within dictionaries... (with
> each letter as the key and the its children as values) is going to be
> extremely space inefficient, right?

Isn't *everything* in python essentially a pointer?  Dictionaries  
with dictionaries within dictionaries...  My gut feeling (which means  
I have not measured it, so I don't actually know) is that it would  
not be space inefficient.  Perhaps someone who knows more about this  
will speak up?