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Generic Trees

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Yash Singh Jha
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15 views

Generic Trees

Uploaded by

Yash Singh Jha
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
Available Formats
Download as PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Generic Trees

Introduction
● In the previous modules, we discussed binary trees where each node can
have a maximum of two children and these can be represented easily with
two pointers i.e right child and left child.
● But suppose, we have a tree with many children for each node.
● If we do not know how many children a node can have, how do we represent
such a tree?
● For example​, consider the tree shown below.

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Generic Tree Node
● Implementation of a generic tree node in Python is quite simple.
● The node class will contain two attributes:
○ The node​ data
○ Since there can be a variable number of children nodes, thus the
second attribute will be a list of its children nodes. Each child is an
instance of the same node class. This is a general ​n-nary tree​.
● Consider the given implementation of the ​Generic Tree Node​ class:

class​ ​GenericTreeNode​:
​def​ __​init__​ (self, data):
self.data = data ​#Node data
self.children = list() ​#List of children nodes

Adding Nodes to a Generic Tree


We can add nodes to a generic tree by simply using the ​list.append()​ function, to
add children nodes to parent nodes. This is shown using the given example:

Suppose we have to construct the given Generic Tree:

Consider the given​ Python code:

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#Create nodes
n1= TreeNode(​5​)
n2 =TreeNode(​2​)
n3 =TreeNode(​9​)
n4 =TreeNode(​8​)
n5 =TreeNode(​7​)
n6 =TreeNode(​15​)
n7 =TreeNode(​1​)

#Add children for node 5 (n1)


n1.children.append(n2)
n1.children.append(n3)
n1.children.append(n4)
n1.children.append(n5)

#Add children for node 9 (n3)


n3.children.append(n6)
n3.children.append(n7)

Print a Generic Tree (Recursively)


In order to print a given generic tree, we will recursively traverse the entire tree.
The steps shall be as follows:
● If the root is ​None​, i.e. the tree is an empty tree, then return​ None​.
● For every child node at a given node, we call the function recursively.
Go through the given Python code for better understanding:

def​ ​printTree​(root):
#Not a base case but an edge case
if​ root == ​None​:
return

print(root.data) ​#Print current node's data


for​ child ​in​ root.children:
printTree(child) ​#Recursively call the function for children

Take Generic Tree Input (Recursively)


Go through the given Python code for better understanding:

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def​ ​takeTreeInput​():
print(​"Enter root Data"​)
rootData = int(input())​#TAKE USER INPUT
if​ rootData == ​-1​:​#Stop taking inputs
return​ ​None

root = TreeNode(rootData)

print(​"Enter number of children for "​, rootData)


childrenCount = int(input()) ​#Get input for no. of child nodes
for​ ​in​ range(childrenCount):
child = takeTreeInput() ​#Input for all childs
root.children.append(child) ​#Add child
return​ root

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