The post-office problem and related questions

Abstract

The only way known to obtain good worst-case algorithms for the post-office problem is to reduce it to region location. For the case of regions bounded by straightline segments a simple algorithm was given recently which is optimal (up to constants). For the case of regions bounded by more or less arbitrary curves no optimal algorithm is known to date. We present a simple (non-optimal) algorithm and demonstrate that space-optimal solutions are possible.