# Sqrt Decomposition

Sqrt Decomposition is a method (or a data structure) that allows you to perform some common operations (finding sum of the elements of the sub-array, finding the minimal/maximal element, etc.) in $O(\sqrt n)$ operations, which is much faster than $O(n)$ for the trivial algorithm.

First we describe the data structure for one of the simplest applications of this idea, then show how to generalize it to solve some other problems, and finally look at a slightly different use of this idea: splitting the input requests into sqrt blocks.

## Sqrt-decomposition based data structure

Given an array $a[0 \dots n-1]$, implement a data structure that allows to find the sum of the elements $a[l \dots r]$ for arbitrary $l$ and $r$ in $O(\sqrt n)$ operations.

### Description

The basic idea of sqrt decomposition is preprocessing. We'll divide the array $a$ into blocks of length approximately $\sqrt n$, and for each block $i$ we'll precalculate the sum of elements in it $b[i]$.

We can assume that both the size of the block and the number of blocks are equal to $\sqrt n$ rounded up:

$$s = \lceil \sqrt n \rceil$$

Then the array $a$ is divided into blocks in the following way:

$$\underbrace{a[0], a[1], \dots, a[s-1]}_{\text{b[0]}}, \underbrace{a[s], \dots, a[2s-1]}_{\text{b[1]}}, \dots, \underbrace{a[(s-1) \cdot s], \dots, a[n]}_{\text{b[s-1]}}$$

The last block may have fewer elements than the others (if $n$ not a multiple of $s$), it is not important to the discussion (as it can be handled easily). Thus, for each block $k$, we know the sum of elements on it $b[k]$:

$$b[k] = \sum\limits_{i=k\cdot s}^{\min {(n-1,(k+1)\cdot s - 1})} a[i]$$

So, we have calculated the values of $b[k]$ (this required $O(n)$ operations). How can they help us to answer each query $[l; r]$ ? Notice that if the interval $[l; r]$ is long enough, it will contain several whole blocks, and for those blocks we can find the sum of elements in them in a single operation. As a result, the interval $[l; r]$ will contain parts of only two blocks, and we'll have to calculate the sum of elements in these parts trivially.

Thus, in order to calculate the sum of elements on the interval $[l; r]$ we only need to sum the elements of the two "tails": $[l\dots (k + 1)\cdot s-1]$ and $[p\cdot s\dots r]$ , and sum the values $b[i]$ in all the blocks from $k + 1$ to $p-1$:

$$\sum\limits_{i=l}^r a[i] = \sum\limits_{i=l}^{(k+1) \cdot s-1} a[i] + \sum\limits_{i=k+1}^{p-1} b[i] + \sum\limits_{i=p\cdot s}^r a[i]$$

Note: When $k = p$, i.e. $l$ and $r$ belong to the same block, the formula can't be applied, and the sum should be calculated trivially.

This approach allows us to significantly reduce the number of operations. Indeed, the size of each "tail" does not exceed the block length $s$, and the number of blocks in the sum does not exceed $s$. Since we have chosen $s \approx \sqrt n$, the total number of operations required to find the sum of elements on the interval $[l; r]$ is $O(\sqrt n)$.

### Implementation

// input data
int n;
vector<int> a (n);

// preprocessing
int len = (int) sqrt (n + .0) + 1; // size of the block and the number of blocks
vector<int> b (len);
for (int i=0; i<n; ++i)
b[i / len] += a[i];

for (;;) {
int l, r;
// read input data for the next query
int sum = 0;
for (int i=l; i<=r; )
if (i % len == 0 && i + len - 1 <= r) {
// if the whole block starting at i belongs to [l; r]
sum += b[i / len];
i += len;
}
else {
sum += a[i];
++i;
}
}


This implementation has unreasonably many division operations (which are much slower than other arithmetical operations). Instead, we can calculate the indices of the blocks $c_l$ and $c_r$ which contain indices $l$ and $r$, and loop through blocks $c_l+1 \dots c_r-1$ with separate processing of the "tails" in blocks $c_l$ and $c_r$. This approach corresponds to the last formula in the description, and makes the case $c_l = c_r$ a special case.

int sum = 0;
int c_l = l / len,   c_r = r / len;
if (c_l == c_r)
for (int i=l; i<=r; ++i)
sum += a[i];
else {
for (int i=l, end=(c_l+1)*len-1; i<=end; ++i)
sum += a[i];
for (int i=c_l+1; i<=c_r-1; ++i)
sum += b[i];
for (int i=c_r*len; i<=r; ++i)
sum += a[i];
}


## Other problems

So far we were discussing the problem of finding the sum of elements of a continuous subarray. This problem can be extended to allow to update individual array elements. If an element $a[i]$ changes, it's sufficient to update the value of $b[k]$ for the block to which this element belongs ($k = i / s$) in one operation:

$$b[k] += a_{new}[i] - a_{old}[i]$$

On the other hand, the task of finding the sum of elements can be replaced with the task of finding minimal/maximal element of a subarray. If this problem has to address individual elements' updates as well, updating the value of $b[k]$ is also possible, but it will require iterating through all values of block $k$ in $O(s) = O(\sqrt{n})$ operations.

Sqrt decomposition can be applied in a similar way to a whole class of other problems: finding the number of zero elements, finding the first non-zero element, counting elements which satisfy a certain property etc.

Another class of problems appears when we need to update array elements on intervals: increment existing elements or replace them with a given value.

For example, let's say we can do two types of operations on an array: add a given value $\delta$ to all array elements on interval $[l; r]$ or query the value of element $a[i]$. Let's store the value which has to be added to all elements of block $k$ in $b[k]$ (initially all $b[k] = 0$). During each "add" operation we need to add $\delta$ to $b[k]$ for all blocks which belong to interval $[l; r]$ and to add $\delta$ to $a[i]$ for all elements which belong to the "tails" of the interval. The answer a query $i$ is simply $a[i] + b[i/s]$. This way "add" operation has $O(\sqrt{n})$ complexity, and answering a query has $O(1)$ complexity.

Finally, those two classes of problems can be combined if the task requires doing both element updates on an interval and queries on an interval. Both operations can be done with $O(\sqrt{n})$ complexity. This will require two block arrays $b$ and $c$: one to keep track of element updates and another to keep track of answers to the query.

There exist other problems which can be solved using sqrt decomposition, for example, a problem about maintaining a set of numbers which would allow adding/deleting numbers, checking whether a number belongs to the set and finding $k$-th largest number. To solve it one has to store numbers in increasing order, split into several blocks with $\sqrt{n}$ numbers in each. Every time a number is added/deleted, the blocks have to be rebalanced by moving numbers between beginnings and ends of adjacent blocks.