Deleting leaves in tree table structures

An article of manufacture comprising a computer disc medium having a computer readable program embedded in said medium, wherein the computer readable program, when executed on a computer, causes the computer to delete a leaf in a patricia tree leaf structure without interrupting the functioning of the patricia tree by:

• providing a patricia tree leaf having a plurality of leaf keys, each of the keys having a pattern x bits in length wherein x is a positive integer, the patricia tree further comprising a plurality of pattern search control blocks, each of the pattern search control blocks configured to decode m bits and store 2m possible combinations of bits wherein m is a positive integer, each of the pattern search control blocks containing a prefix and either an end-of-trail leaf or a pointer to another of the pattern search control blocks;
• placing each of the prefixes in a tree prefix table;
• searching for a key in the patricia tree;
• searching for the key in the prefix table if the patricia tree searching does not find the key in the patricia tree;
• confirming that the key is deleted if the key is not found in the prefix table;
• and
• deleting the key from one of the pattern search control blocks and collapsing the patricia tree by eliminating the left most pattern search control block from the patricia tree if the patricia tree searching finds the key.