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A complete binary tree is a binary tree where each level 'l' except the last has 2^l nodes and the nodes at the last level are all left-aligned. Complete binary trees are mainly used in heap-based data structures.
The nodes in the complete binary tree are inserted from left to right in one level at a time. If a level is full, the node is inserted in a new level.
Below are some complete binary trees.
1 / \ 2 3 1 / \ 2 3 / \ / 4 5 6
Below binary trees are not complete:
1 / \ 2 3 / / 4 5 1 / \ 2 3 / \ / 4 5 6 / 7
Complete binary trees are generally represented using arrays. The array representation is better because it doesn't contain any empty slots. Given parent index i, its left child is given by 2 * i + 1, and its right child is given by 2 * i + 2. So no extra space is wasted and space to store left and right pointers is saved. However, it may be an interesting programming question to create a Complete Binary Tree using linked representation. Here Linked means a non-array representation where the left and right pointers(or references) are used to refer left and right children respectively. How to write an insert function that always adds a new node in the last level and at the leftmost available position?
To create a linked complete binary tree, we need to keep track of the nodes in a level order fashion such that the next node to be inserted lies in the leftmost position. A queue data structure can be used to keep track of the inserted nodes.
The following are steps to insert a new node in Complete Binary Tree.
- If the tree is empty, initialize the root with a new node.
- Else, get the front node of the queue.
- .......If the left child of this front node doesn't exist, set the left child as the new node.
- .......else if the right child of this front node doesn't exist, set the right child as the new node.
- If the front node has both the left child and right child, Dequeue() it.
- Enqueue() the new node.
Below is the implementation:
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12