Nested Set Union

Abstract

We consider a version of the classic disjoint set union (union-find) problem in which there are two partitions of the elements, rather than just one, but restricted such that one partition is a refinement of the other. We call this the nested set union problem. This problem occurs in a new algorithm to find dominators in a flow graph. One can solve the problem by using two instances of a data structure for the classical problem, but it is natural to ask whether these instances can be combined. We show that the answer is yes: the nested problem can be solved by extending the classic solution to support two nested partitions, at the cost of at most a few bits of storage per element and a small constant overhead in running time. Our solution extends to handle any constant number of nested partitions.