algorithms - Word Frequency with Ordering in O(n) Complexity - Computer Science Stack Exchange

algorithms - Word Frequency with Ordering in O(n) Complexity - Computer Science Stack Exchange

I suggest a variation of distribution counting:

1. Read the text and insert all the word encountered into a trie, maintaining in each node a count, how often the word represented by this node has occured. Additionally keep track of the highest word count. -- $O(n)$
2. Initialize an array of size maxWordCount. Entry type are lists of strings. -- $O(n)$, since the count can't be higher.
3. Traverse the trie and for each node add the corresponding string to the array entry indicated by the count. -- $O(n)$, since the total length of strings is bounded by $n$.
4. Traverse the array in descending order and output the desired number of strings. -- $O(n)$, since that is a bound on both the size of and the amount of data in the array.

You can probably replace the trie by other data structures in the first phase.

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