SYSTEM FOR AND METHOD OF CACHE-EFFICIENT DIGITAL TREE WITH RICH POINTERS

An adaptive digital tree data structure incorporates a rich pointer object, the rich pointer including both conventional address redirection information used to traverse the structure and supplementary information used to optimize tree traversal, skip levels, detect errors, and store state information. The structure of the pointer is flexible so that, instead of storing pointer information, data may be stored in the structure of the pointer itself and thereby referenced without requiring further redirection.