Cover Data Structures and Algorithms with Object-Oriented Design Patterns in Java
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Binary Trees

 

This section presents an implementation of binary trees in the sense of Definition gif. A binary tree is essentially a N-ary tree where N=2. Therefore, it is possible to implemented binary trees using the NaryTree class presented in the preceding section. However, because the NaryTree class implementation is a general implementation which can accommodate any value of N, it is somewhat less efficient in both time and space than an implementation which is designed specifically for the case N=2. Since binary trees occur quite frequently in practice, it is important to have a good implementation.

Another consequence of restricting N to two is that we can talk of the left and right subtrees of a tree. Consequently the interface provided by a binary tree class is quite different from the general interface provided by an N-ary tree class.

Figure gif shows how the binary tree given in Figure gif is be represented. The basic idea is that each node of the tree contains two fields that refer to the subtrees of that node. Just as we did for N-ary trees, we represent explicitly the empty trees. Since an empty tree node contains neither root nor subtrees it is represented by a structure in which all the fields are null.

   figure16208
Figure: Representing binary trees.

The BinaryTree class is declared in Program gif. The BinaryTree class extends the AbstractTree class introduced in Program gif.

   program16381
Program: BinaryTree fields.




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Bruno Copyright © 1998 by Bruno R. Preiss, P.Eng. All rights reserved.