Data Structures and

Algorithms
Binary Trees

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 Binary-Tree Related
Definitions
The children of any node in a binary tree
are ordered into a left child and a right
child 1
A node can have a left and 3 7
a right child, a left child
only, a right child only, 5 8 9
or no children 10
4 6
The tree made up of a left
child (of a node x) and all its 11 12
descendents is called the left subtree of x
Right subtrees are defined similarly

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 Parts of a binary tree
 A binary tree is composed of zero or more nodes
 Each node contains:
A value (some sort of data item)
A reference or pointer to a left child (may be null),
and
A reference or pointer to a right child (may be null)
 A binary tree may be empty (contain no nodes)
 If not empty, a binary tree has a root node
Every node in the binary tree is reachable from the
root node by a unique path
 A node with no left child and no right child is called a
leaf
In some binary trees, only the leaves contain a value
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 Left ≠ Right
 The following two binary trees are different:

A A

B B

 In the first binary tree, node A has a left child but no

right child; in the second, node A has a right child but
no left child
 Put another way: Left and right are not relative terms

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 Size and depth
The size of a binary tree is
a the number of nodes in it
This tree has size 12
b c The depth of a node is its
distance from the root
d e f a is at depth zero
 e is at depth 2

g h i j k The depth of a binary tree

is the depth of its deepest
l node
This tree has depth 4

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 Balance
a a
b c b

d e f g c e
d f
h i j
A balanced binary tree g h
i j
An unbalanced binary tree
 A binary tree is balanced if every level above the lowest is “full”
(contains 2n nodes)
 In most applications, a reasonably balanced binary tree is
desirable
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 Sorted binary trees
A binary tree is sorted if every node in the
tree is larger than (or equal to) its left
descendants, and smaller than (or equal to)
its right descendants
Equal nodes can go either on the left or the
right (but it has to be consistent)
10

8 15

4 12 20

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 Preoder, Inorder, Postorder
In Preorder, the root Preorder Traversal:
1. Visit the root
is visited before (pre) 2. Traverse left subtree
the subtrees traversals 3. Traverse right subtree
In Inorder, the root is Inorder Traversal:
visited in-between left 1. Traverse left subtree
2. Visit the root
and right subtree traversal
3. Traverse right subtree
In Preorder, the root
Postorder Traversal:
is visited after (pre) 1. Traverse left subtree
the subtrees traversals 2. Traverse right subtree
3. Visit the root
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 Illustrations for Traversals
Assume: visiting a node 1
is printing its label 3 7
Preorder:
1 3 5 4 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 5 8 9
Inorder:
10
4 5 6 3 1 8 7 9 11 10 12 4 6
Postorder:
11 12
4 6 5 3 8 11 12 10 9 7 1

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 Illustrations for Traversals
(Contd.)
Assume: visiting a node 15
is printing its data 8 20
Preorder: 15 8 2 6 3 7
2 11 27
11 10 12 14 20 27 22 30
Inorder: 2 3 6 7 8 10 11
6 10 12 22 30
12 14 15 20 22 27 30
Postorder: 3 7 6 2 10 14 3 7 14

12 11 8 22 30 27 20 15

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 Tree traversals using “flags”
 The order in which the nodes are visited during a
tree traversal can be easily determined by imagining
there is a “flag” attached to each node, as follows:

preorder inorder postorde

r
 To traverse the tree, collect the flags:

A A A

B C B C B C

D E F G D E F G D E F G

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A
 Other traversals
The other traversals are the reverse of these
three standard ones
That is, the right subtree is traversed before the
left subtree is traversed
Reverse preorder: root, right subtree, left
subtree
Reverse inorder: right subtree, root, left
subtree
Reverse postorder: right subtree, left subtree,
root

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 The End

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