Binary Trees

by Nick Parlante

This article introduces the basic concepts of binary trees, and then works through a series of practice problems with solution code in C/C++ and Java. Binary trees have an elegant recursive pointer structure, so they are a good way to learn recursive pointer algorithms.

Contents

Section 1. Binary Tree Structure -- a quick introduction to binary trees and the code that operates on them
Section 2. Binary Tree Problems -- practice problems in increasing order of difficulty
Section 3. C Solutions -- solution code to the problems for C and C++ programmers
Section 4. Java versions -- how binary trees work in Java, with solution code

Stanford CS Education Library -- #110

This is article #110 in the Stanford CS Education Library. This and other free CS materials are available at the library (http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/). That people seeking education should have the opportunity to find it. This article may be used, reproduced, excerpted, or sold so long as this paragraph is clearly reproduced. Copyright 2000-2001, Nick Parlante, nick.parlante@cs.stanford.edu.

Related CSLibrary Articles

• Linked List Problems (http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/105/) -- a large collection of linked list problems using various pointer techniques (while this binary tree article concentrates on recursion)
• Pointer and Memory (http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/102/) -- basic concepts of pointers and memory
• The Great Tree-List Problem (http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/109/) -- a great pointer recursion problem that uses both trees and lists

Section 1 -- Introduction To Binary Trees

A binary tree is made of nodes, where each node contains a "left" pointer, a "right" pointer, and a data element. The "root" pointer points to the topmost node in the tree. The left and right pointers recursively point to smaller "subtrees" on either side. A null pointer represents a binary tree with no elements -- the empty tree. The formal recursive definition is: a binary tree is either empty (represented by a null pointer), or is made of a single node, where the left and right pointers (recursive definition ahead) each point to a binary tree.

A "binary search tree" (BST) or "ordered binary tree" is a type of binary tree where the nodes are arranged in order: for each node, all elements in its left subtree are less-or-equal to the node (<=), and all the elements in its right subtree are greater than the node (>). The tree shown above is a binary search tree -- the "root" node is a 5, and its left subtree nodes (1, 3, 4) are <= 5, and its right subtree nodes (6, 9) are > 5. Recursively, each of the subtrees must also obey the binary search tree constraint: in the (1, 3, 4) subtree, the 3 is the root, the 1 <= 3 and 4 > 3. Watch out for the exact wording in the problems -- a "binary search tree" is different from a "binary tree".

The nodes at the bottom edge of the tree have empty subtrees and are called "leaf" nodes (1, 4, 6) while the others are "internal" nodes (3, 5, 9