A Generalized Counter Scheme

Abstract The transposition heuristic is a common method used to improve the performance of accessing records in a linked list. After the list has reached a steady state for the transposition heuristic, we begin to keep a frequency count for each record. A method of re-arranging the records, called the generalized counter scheme, is introduced and is shown to be optimal among all possible methods of re-arrangement based on the counts. The scheme is applicable even when the count is small. The usual counter scheme is also shown to be optimal for any finite count.