Stealing From the Dragon's Hoard: Online Unbounded Knapsack With Removal

Fuente: arXiv
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Main Authors: Gehnen, Matthias, Stocker, Moritz
Format: Preprint
Published: 2025
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author Gehnen, Matthias
Stocker, Moritz
author_facet Gehnen, Matthias
Stocker, Moritz
contents We introduce the Online Unbounded Knapsack Problem with Removal, a variation of the well-known Online Knapsack Problem. Items, each with a weight and value, arrive online and an algorithm must decide on whether or not to pack them into a knapsack with a fixed weight limit. An item may be packed an arbitrary number of times and items may be removed from the knapsack at any time without cost. The goal is to maximize the total value of items packed, while respecting a weight limit. We show that this is one of the very few natural online knapsack variants that allow for competitive deterministic algorithms in the general setting, by providing an algorithm with competitivity 1.6911. We complement this with a lower bound of 1.5877. We also analyze the proportional setting, where the weight and value of any single item agree, and show that deterministic algorithms can be exactly 3/2-competitive. Lastly, we give lower and upper bounds of 6/5 and 4/3 on the competitivity of randomized algorithms in this setting.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_19914
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Stealing From the Dragon's Hoard: Online Unbounded Knapsack With Removal
Gehnen, Matthias
Stocker, Moritz
Data Structures and Algorithms
We introduce the Online Unbounded Knapsack Problem with Removal, a variation of the well-known Online Knapsack Problem. Items, each with a weight and value, arrive online and an algorithm must decide on whether or not to pack them into a knapsack with a fixed weight limit. An item may be packed an arbitrary number of times and items may be removed from the knapsack at any time without cost. The goal is to maximize the total value of items packed, while respecting a weight limit. We show that this is one of the very few natural online knapsack variants that allow for competitive deterministic algorithms in the general setting, by providing an algorithm with competitivity 1.6911. We complement this with a lower bound of 1.5877. We also analyze the proportional setting, where the weight and value of any single item agree, and show that deterministic algorithms can be exactly 3/2-competitive. Lastly, we give lower and upper bounds of 6/5 and 4/3 on the competitivity of randomized algorithms in this setting.
title Stealing From the Dragon's Hoard: Online Unbounded Knapsack With Removal
topic Data Structures and Algorithms
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.19914