title: Implementing a Patricia Trie for use as a dictionary
body: <p>I'm attempting to implement a Patricia Trie with the methods <code>addWord()</code>, <code>isWord()</code>, and <code>isPrefix()</code> as a means to store a large dictionary of words for quick retrieval (including prefix search). I've read up on the concepts but they just aren't clarifying into an implementation. I want to know (in Java or Python code) how to implement the Trie, particularly the nodes (or should I implement it recursively). I saw one person who implemented it with an array of 26 child nodes set to null/None. Is there a better strategy (such as treating the letters as bits) and how would you implement it?</p>