How to get Autocomplete functionality without a control

Question

If you supply a list of strings to an edit control and set the autocomplete mode and source then you automatically get autocomplete functionality. My question is can I get the same functionality in .NET somewhere without a control. In other words I want something like:

string[] ProgressivePartialMatch( string[] Strings, string MatchText )

and so I want the strings back that would have showed up in the autocomplete, so to speak.

Answer 1

If you want fast autocomplete, you're going to want to implement a trie. You can find all the items that start with a particular string by following the trie down until the "starts with" string ends.