IT205: Data Structures

Binary Search Trees

Anish Mathuria
Faculty Block 1, 1105
Binary Search Trees
A binary search tree
is a binary tree
if a node has value N, all values in its left sub-
tree are less than N, and all values in its right
sub-tree are greater than N. This property
called binary search tree property holds for
each and every node in the tree
5
4 8
1
3
7
11
BINARY SEARCH TREE
Example
17
6 19
11
15
NOT A
BINARY SEARCH TREE Why?
Example
Operations
Search for an element
Minimum, Maximum
Predecessor, Successor
Insert, Delete
BST Implementation
9
5
10
96 99
94
97
key
left right
9
5 94
10 97
96 99
root
BST Operations - Search
Given a Binary Search Tree B, we search for a
key k, first at the root, then either in the left
subtree or the right subtree
Search (B, k)
v := root(B)
if v = NULL or k = v.key then
return v
if k < v.key then
Search (v.left, k)
else
Search (v.right, k)
BST Operations Search (2)
An Iterative search can also be defined
Search (B, k)
v := root(B)
while v null and k v.key do
if k < v.key then
v := v.left
else
v := v.right
return v
Example
Search for 13
BST Operations Maximum
The Binary Search Tree property guarantees
that the maximum is the right most child of the
tree
Maximum (B)
v := root(B)
while v.right NULL do
v := v.right
return v
Minimum can similarly be defined
Example
Minimum
Maximum
BST Operations Insertion
The insertion of an item with a new key k into a
Binary Search Tree requires three steps
Create a node to hold the item
Determine the place in the BST where the new node is to
be inserted. To do this:
Search for the key k in the BST. If the key is found, false is
returned and the operation terminated, otherwise,
the search will encounter a null value in one of the leaf nodes
of the BST
Attach the new node to this leaf node, either as a left or
right child
Example: insertion
12
5
9
18
19
15
17
2
13 Insert 13 in the tree
u
Insert Psuedo-code
Assuming node u is created and initialised
Insert (B, u)
v := root(B)
if v = NULL then // an empty tree
root (B) := u
while v NULL do
if u.key = v.key then
// item with key already exists
return false
p := v
if u.key < v.key then
v := v.left
else
v := v.right
if u.key < p.key then
p.left := u
else
p.right := u
return true
Exercise
Insert 95 into the following tree
10
96
99
94
97
Exercise
Insert the following numbers into a Binary
Search Tree:
50, 16, 89, 7, 45, 70, 66, 10 and 95
Exercise
50
16 89
95 70
66
45 7
10
Insert the following numbers into a Binary
Search Tree:
50, 16, 89, 7, 45, 70, 66, 10 and 95
BST Operations - Delete
When we delete a node, we need to consider
how we take care of the children of the deleted
node
This has to be done without violating the
search tree property
Delete Three cases...
Node to be deleted is a leaf node case 0
Node to be deleted has one child case 1
Node to be deleted has two children case 2
Find the node to be deleted
If the node to be deleted is a leaf node then set
the parents link to null
A
D
B G
C E I
F H J
Delete A
A
Node to be deleted is a leaf node
Exercise
Delete 5 from the following tree
94
10 97
5 24
11
17
5
94
10 97
24
11
17
Delete node has one child
find the node to be deleted
The orphan is adopted by the grandparent
D
B G
C E I
F H J
Exercise
Delete 24 from the following tree
94
10 97
5 24
11
17
24
94
10 97
5
11
17
Delete node has two children
Find the node to be deleted
Node to be deleted is
replaced by the left most
node (i.e. the last left child
in the path) in the right sub-
tree, called the successor
D
C G
E I
F H J
H
Promote left most node in right sub-tree
delete node
successor
successor takes place
of delete node
successors parent
adopts successors right child.
Before delete
After delete
Exercise
Delete 10 from the following tree
94
10 97
5 24
11
17
94
11 97
5 24
11
17
Correctness of Tree Delete
How do we know case 2 should go to case 0 or case
1 instead of back to case 2?
Because when node to be deleted has 2 children,
its successor is the minimum in its right subtree,
and that successor has no left child (hence 0 or 1
child)
Equivalently, we could swap with predecessor
instead of successor. It might be good to alternate to
avoid creating lopsided tree
Deletion Pseudo-code
You have to write this complex pseudocode
Level and Height
The level of its node is its
distance from the root
The root is at level 0
The children of the root are at
level 1
Their children are at level 2
The height of the tree is the
level of a leaf in the longest
path from the root plus 1
This is not the standard
definition
E
B F
A D H
C G I
Efficiency of BST Operations
The operations search, insert, and delete
require at most h comparisons, where h is the
height of the tree
Maximum height
Searching, insertion, deletion take n comparisons
Minimum height
Searching, insertion, deletion take log n + 1
comparisons
Insert 9
Insert 1
Insert 8
Insert 4
Insert 5
Insert 6
Insert 7
Its a linked list!
Example of maximum height BST
8
1
9
5
4
height = 7
6
7
Insert 6
Insert 4
Insert 8
Insert 1
Insert 5
Insert 7
Insert 9
Example of minimum height BST
8
4
6
9
1
height = 3
5 7
Maximum Height Tree
Given a binary tree with n nodes, what is the
maximum value it could have for its height?
Ans: n
Minimum Height Tree
Given a binary tree with n nodes, what is the
minimum value it could have for its height?
Assume that n = 2
k
1 for some k
For this choice of n, the minimum height tree
will be a Full Tree
All internal (non-leaf) nodes have 2 children
All leaves are on the same, last level of the tree
Example of minimum height tree
The binary tree below is a full tree of height 3, and it
has 2
3
-1 = 7 nodes
So how can we relate n (7) to the height h (3)?
Level 0: 1 node = 2
0
Level 1: 2 nodes = 2
1
Level 2: 4 nodes = 2
2

Level h 1: 2
h-1
nodes
The total number of nodes is the sum of the nodes
at each level
Recall (from the last slide) that
n = 2
0
+ 2
1
+ + 2
h-1
for some h
Note that h is the height of the tree, so if we can solve for h
we are done
Using math, we know that
2
0
+ 2
1
+ + 2
h-1
= 2
h
1 (geometric sum)
Now we have
n = 2
h
1
Now we also know that a Full Tree of height h has 2
h
-1
nodes
Taking the log
2
of both sides we get
h = log
2
(n+1)
Note the formula on previous slide is for a tree
with 2
k
-1 nodes
Binary trees can have any number of nodes
will this change the formula?
Not significantly (omit proof)
The minimum height for any binary tree with n
nodes is
h = 1 + log n
2
Insert 7
Insert 4
Insert 1
Insert 9
Insert 5
Example of minimum height BST
7
4 9
1 5
height = log(n)+1 =
log(5)+1 = 3
Binary Search Trees
Advantage: If the tree has minimum height, then
every operation takes log n + 1 comparisons
Problem: The tree might get very deep. For example,
when inserting ordered numbers to the tree, the
resulting height will be exactly n
Thus, our goal is to keep the height of a binary search
tree shallow
Such trees are called balanced binary search trees.
Examples are AVL tree, red-black tree