Binary search tree

In computer science, a binary search tree (BST), also called an

ordered or sorted binary tree, is a rooted binary tree data Binary search tree
structure whose internal nodes each store a key greater than all Type tree
the keys in the node’s left subtree and less than those in its right Invented 1960
subtree. A binary tree is a type of data structure for storing data
such as numbers in an organized way. Binary search trees allow Invented P.F. Windley, A.D. Booth,
binary search for fast lookup, addition and removal of data items, by A.J.T. Colin, and T.N.
and can be used to implement dynamic sets and lookup tables. Hibbard
The order of nodes in a BST means that each comparison skips Time complexity in big O notation
about half of the remaining tree, so the whole lookup takes time
proportional to the binary logarithm of the number of items Algorithm Average Worst
stored in the tree. This is much better than the linear time case
required to find items by key in an (unsorted) array, but slower Space O(n) O(n)
than the corresponding operations on hash tables. Several
Search O(log n) O(n)
variants of the binary search tree have been studied.
Insert O(log n) O(n)
Delete O(log n) O(n)
Contents
Definition
Order relation
Operations
Searching
Searching with duplicates allowed
Traversal
Advancing to the next or previous node A binary search tree of size 9
Verification and depth 3, with 8 at the
Insertion root. The leaves are not
drawn.
Deletion
Parallel algorithms
Examples of applications
Sort
Priority queue operations
Types
Performance comparisons
Optimal binary search trees
See also
Notes
References
Further reading
External links
Definition
A binary search tree is a rooted binary tree, whose internal nodes each store a key (and optionally, an
associated value), and each has two distinguished sub-trees, commonly denoted left and right. The tree
additionally satisfies the binary search property: the key in each node is greater than or equal to any key
stored in the left sub-tree, and less than or equal to any key stored in the right sub-tree.[1]:287 The leaves
(final nodes) of the tree contain no key and have no structure to distinguish them from one another.

Often, the information represented by each node is a record rather than a single data element. However, for
sequencing purposes, nodes are compared according to their keys rather than any part of their associated
records. The major advantage of binary search trees over other data structures is that the related sorting
algorithms and search algorithms such as inorder traversal can be very efficient.[note 1]

Binary search trees are a fundamental data structure used to construct more abstract data structures such as
sets, multisets, and associative arrays.

When inserting or searching for an element in a binary search tree, the key of each visited
node has to be compared with the key of the element to be inserted or found.
The shape of the binary search tree depends entirely on the order of insertions and deletions
and can become degenerate.
After a long intermixed sequence of random insertion and deletion, the expected height of
the tree approaches square root of the number of keys, √n , which grows much faster than
log n.
There has been a lot of research to prevent degeneration of the tree resulting in worst case
time complexity of O(n) (for details see section Types).

Order relation

Binary search requires an order relation by which every element (item) can be compared with every other
element in the sense of a total preorder. The part of the element which effectively takes place in the
comparison is called its key. Whether duplicates, i. e. different elements with the same key, shall be allowed
in the tree or not, does not depend on the order relation, but on the underlying set, in other words: on the
application only. For a search function supporting and handling duplicates in a tree, see section Searching
with duplicates allowed.

In the context of binary search trees, a total preorder is realized most flexibly by means of a three-way
comparison subroutine.

Operations
Binary search trees support three main operations: lookup (checking whether a key is present), insertion of
an element, and deletion of an element. The latter two possibly change the tree, whereas the first one is a
navigating and read-only operation. Other read-only operations are traversal, verification etc.

Searching

Searching in a binary search tree for a specific key can be programmed recursively or iteratively.
We begin by examining the root node. If the tree is null, the key we are searching for does not exist in the
tree. Otherwise, if the key equals that of the root, the search is successful and we return the node. If the key
is less than that of the root, we search the left subtree. Similarly, if the key is greater than that of the root, we
search the right subtree. This process is repeated until the key is found or the remaining subtree is null. If
the searched key is not found after a null subtree is reached, then the key is not present in the tree. This is
easily expressed as a recursive algorithm (implemented in Python):

1 def search_recursively(key, node):

2 if node is None or key == node.key:
3 return node
4 if key < node.key:
5 return search_recursively(key, node.left)
6 return search_recursively(key, node.right)

The same algorithm can be implemented iteratively:

1 def search_iteratively(key, node):

2 while node is not None and node.key != key:
3 if key < node.key:
4 node = node.left
5 else:
6 node = node.right
7 return node

The following interative version of the search function does not use parent pointers in the node data
structure, instead it uses a stack for holding the pointers to the ancestors. This stack is embedded into a
larger structure, called traverser.[2]:§68

1 struct TreeNode {
2 struct TreeNode *child[2];
3 int key;
4 int value;
5 } Node;
6
7 #define LEFT 0
8 #define RIGHT 1
9 #define left child[LEFT]
10 #define right child[RIGHT]
11
12 #define MAXheight 1024 // BST is possibly unbalanced
13
14 struct traverser {
15 Node* nod1; // current position (NULL,
16 // if nod1->key ahead or behind all nodes of bst)
17 int dir; // ∈ {LEFT,FOUND,RIGHT}, i.e.
18 // == LEFT <==> position at < nod1
19 // == FOUND <==> position at nod1
20 // == RIGHT <==> position at > nod1
21 Node** parent = &ancestors[0]; // -> parent of nod1 or NULL if root
22 // ancestors[0] == trav->bst->root, if tree not empty.
23 Node** limit = &ancestors[MAXheight]; // -> utmost entry
24 BST* bst; // -> BST to which this traverser belongs
25 Node* ancestors[MAXheight-1];
26 };
27
28 // search Iteratively with Traverser:
29 int searchIT (struct traverser* trav, int key) {
30 assert (trav != NULL && trav->bst != NULL);
31 trav->parent = &(trav->ancestors[-1]);
32 dir = LEFT; // in case trav->bst (and while-loop) is empty
33 node = trav->bst->root;
34 while (node != NULL) {
35 if (key == node->key) { // key is in the BST
36 trav->node = node; // onto trav
37 trav->dir = FOUND;
38 // 2 == FOUND: key == node->key
 39 return node;
40 }
41 if (key < node->key) dir = LEFT;
42 else dir = RIGHT;
43 if (++(trav->parent) >= limit) { // stack overflow
44 fprintf (stderr, "tree too deep\n");
45 exit (EXIT_FAILURE);
46 }
47 *(trav->parent) = node; // onto stack
48 node = node->child[dir];
49 }; // end of while-loop
50 // *(trav->parent) is the node of closest fit
51 trav->dir = dir;
52 // 0 == LEFT: key < (*(trav->parent))->key
53 // 1 == RIGHT: key > (*(trav->parent))->key
54 return NULL;
55 }

These three examples do not support duplicates, that is, they consider the tree as totally ordered.

One can note that the recursive algorithm is tail recursive. In a language supporting tail call optimization,
the recursive and iterative examples will compile to equivalent programs.

Because in the worst case this algorithm must search from the root of the tree to the leaf farthest from the
root, the search operation takes time proportional to the tree’s height (see tree terminology). On average,
binary search trees with Nodes keys have O(log |Nodes|) height.[note 2] However, in the worst case,
binary search trees can have O(|Nodes|) height, when the unbalanced tree resembles a linked list
(degenerate tree).

Searching with duplicates allowed

If the order relation is only a total preorder, a reasonable extension of the functionality is the following: also
in case of equality search down to the leaves. Thereby allowing to specify (or hard-wire) a direction, where
to insert a duplicate, either to the right or left of all duplicates in the tree so far. If the direction is hard-wired,
both choices, right and left, support a stack with insert duplicate as push operation and delete as the pop
operation.[3]:155

1 def search_duplicatesAllowed(key, node):

2 new_node = node
3 while new_node != None:
4 current_node = new_node
5 if key < current_node.key:
6 dir = 0 # LEFT
7 else: # key >= current_node.key:
8 dir = 1 # RIGHT
9 new_node = current_node.child[dir]
10 return (dir, current_node)

A binary tree sort equipped with such a search function becomes stable.

Traversal

Once the binary search tree has been created, its elements can be retrieved inorder by recursively traversing
the left subtree of the root node, accessing the node itself, then recursively traversing the right subtree of the
node, continuing this pattern with each node in the tree as it is recursively accessed. As with all binary
trees, one may conduct a pre-order traversal or a post-order traversal, but neither are likely to be useful for
binary search trees. An inorder traversal of a binary search tree will always result in a sorted list of node
items (numbers, strings or other comparable items).
Code for inorder traversal in Python is given below. It will call callback (some function the programmer
wishes to call on the node’s value, such as printing to the screen) for every node in the tree.

1 def inorder_traversal(node, callback):

2 if node == None:
3 return
4 inorder_traversal(node.leftChild, callback)
5 callback(node.value)
6 inorder_traversal(node.rightChild, callback)

Code for (recursive) inorder traversal in C is given below. In this case it will use printf to print the
integer value of the node in the screen.

1 void inorder_traversal(Node *node) {

2 if (node == NULL) return;
3 inorder_traversal(node->left);
4 printf("%i%i ,", node->key, node->value);
5 inorder_traversal(node->right);
6 }

Every form of binary tree depth first traversal requires 2×(n−1) ∈ O(n) time, since it visits every arc
exactly twice (once down, once up) while visiting every node. This algorithm is also O(n), so it is
asymptotically optimal.

Traversal can also be implemented iteratively. For certain applications, e.g. greater equal search,
approximative search, an operation for single step (iterative) traversal can be very useful. This is, of course,
implemented without the callback construct.

Advancing to the next or previous node

This function is useful e.g. in cases where the location of the element being searched for is not known
exactly enough. After having looked up a starting point, the search can be continued sequentially.

The node to be started with may have been found in the BST by means of a search function. In the
following example, which does not use parent pointers, the stack of pointers to the ancestors has been built
e.g. by a searchIT function with successful outcome.

The function inorderNext[2]:§61 returns an inorder-neighbor of the found node, either the
inorder-successor (for dir=RIGHT) or the inorder-predecessor (for dir=LEFT), and the updated
stack, so that the binary search tree may be sequentially inorder-traversed and searched in the given
direction dir further on.

1 /* Returns the next or previous data item in inorder within the tree being traversed with
trav, or if there are no more data items returns NULL.
2 In the former case inorderNext() may be called again to retrieve the second next item. */
3 Node* inorderNext (struct traverser* trav, dir) {
4 assert (trav != NULL);
5 assert (trav->dir == FOUND);
6 assert (dir == LEFT || dir == RIGHT);
7
8 newnode = trav->node->child[dir];
9 if (newnode != NULL) {
10 // Part A: node has a dir-child.
11 do {
12 node = newnode;
13 if (++(trav->parent) > limit) { // stack overflow
14 fprintf (stderr, "tree too deep\n");
15 exit (EXIT_FAILURE);
 16 }
17 *(trav->parent) = node; // onto stack
18 newnode = node->child[1-dir]
19 } until (newnode == NULL);
20 return node;
21 }
22 // Part B: node does not have a dir-child.
23 do {
24 if (--(trav->parent) < &(trav->ancestors[0])) // stack is empty
25 return NULL;
26 oldnode = node;
27 node = *(trav->parent); // parent of oldnode
28 } until (oldnode != node->child[dir]);
29 // now: oldnode == node->child[1-dir], i.e.
30 // node is ancestor (and predecessor for dir==LEFT resp.
31 // successor for dir==RIGHT) of the original trav->node.
32 return node;
33 }

Note that the function does not use keys, which means that the sequential structure is completely recorded
by the binary search tree’s arcs. For traversals without change of direction, the (amortised) average
complexity is because a full traversal takes steps for a BST of size 1 step for arc up and 1
for arc down. The worst-case complexity is with as the height of the tree.

The implementation requires stack space proportional to the height of the tree.

Verification

Sometimes we already have a binary tree, and we need to determine whether it is a BST. This problem has
a simple recursive solution.

The BST property—every node on the right subtree has to be larger than the current node and every node
on the left subtree has to be smaller than the current node—is the key to figuring out whether a tree is a
BST or not. The greedy algorithm—simply traverse the tree, at every node check whether the node
contains a value larger than the value at the left child and smaller than the value on the right child—does
not work for all cases. Consider the following tree:

20
/ \
10 30
/ \
5 40

In the tree above, each node meets the condition that the node contains a value larger than its left child and
smaller than its right child hold, and yet it is not a BST: the value 5 is on the right subtree of the node
containing 20, a violation of the BST property.

Instead of making a decision based solely on the values of a node and its children, we also need
information flowing down from the parent as well. In the case of the tree above, if we could remember
about the node containing the value 20, we would see that the node with value 5 is violating the BST
property contract.

So the condition we need to check at each node is:

if the node is the left child of its parent, then it must be smaller than (or equal to) the parent
and it must pass down the value from its parent to its right subtree to make sure none of the
nodes in that subtree is greater than the parent
 if the node is the right child of its parent, then it must be larger than the parent and it must
pass down the value from its parent to its left subtree to make sure none of the nodes in that
subtree is lesser than the parent.

A recursive solution in C++ can explain this further:

1 struct TreeNode {
2 int key;
3 int value;
4 struct TreeNode *left;
5 struct TreeNode *right;
6 };
7
8 bool isBST(struct TreeNode *node, int minKey, int maxKey) {
9 if (node == NULL) return true;
10 if (node->key < minKey || node->key > maxKey) return false;
11
12 return isBST(node->left, minKey, node->key−1) && isBST(node->right, node->key+1,
maxKey);
13 }

node->key+1 and node->key−1 are done to allow only distinct elements in BST.

If we want the same elements to also be present, then we can use only node->key in both places.

The initial call to this function can be something like this:

1 if (isBST(root, INT_MIN, INT_MAX)) {

2 puts("This is a BST.");
3 } else {
4 puts("This is NOT a BST!");
5 }

Essentially we keep creating a valid range (starting from [MIN_VALUE, MAX_VALUE]) and keep
shrinking it down for each node as we go down recursively.

As pointed out in section #Traversal, an inorder traversal of a binary search tree returns the nodes sorted.
Thus we only need to keep the last visited node while traversing the tree and check whether its key is
smaller (or smaller/equal, if duplicates are to be allowed in the tree) compared to the current key.

Insertion

Insertion begins as a search would begin; if the key is not equal to that of the root, we search the left or
right subtrees as before. Eventually, we will reach an external node and add the new key-value pair (here
encoded as a record 'newNode') as its right or left child, depending on the node’s key. In other words, we
examine the root and recursively insert the new node to the left subtree if its key is less than that of the root,
or the right subtree if its key is greater than or equal to the root.

Here is how a typical binary search tree insertion might be performed in a binary tree in C++:

1 void insert(Node*& root, int key, int value) {

2 if (!root)
3 root = new Node(key, value);
4 else if (key == root->key)
5 root->value = value;
6 else if (key < root->key)
7 insert(root->left, key, value);
8 else // key > root->key
 9 insert(root->right, key, value);
10 }

Alternatively, a non-recursive version might be implemented in C like this. Using a pointer-to-pointer to

keep track of where we came from lets the code avoid explicit checking for and handling of the case where
it needs to insert a node at the tree root:[4]

1 void insert(Node** root, int key, int value) {

2 Node **walk = root;
3 while (*walk) {
4 int curkey = (*walk)->key;
5 if (curkey == key) {
6 (*walk)->value = value;
7 return;
8 }
9 if (key > curkey)
10 walk = &(*walk)->right;
11 else
12 walk = &(*walk)->left;
13 }
14 *walk = new Node(key, value);
15 }

In the following example, which does not use parent pointers, the stack of pointers to the ancestors has
been built e.g. by a searchIT function with outcome key node->key not FOUND.

1 // insert after search Iteratively with Traverser:

2 void insertIT(struct traverser* trav,Node* node) {
3 assert (trav != NULL);
4 assert (trav->node != NULL);
5 assert (trav->dir == LEFT || trav->dir == RIGHT);
6 assert (node != NULL);
7 trav->node->child[trav->dir] = node;
8 if (++(trav->parent) > limit) { // stack overflow
9 fprintf (stderr, "tree too deep\n");
10 exit (EXIT_FAILURE);
11 }
12 *(trav->parent) = node; // onto stack
13 }

The above destructive procedural variant modifies the tree in place. It uses only constant heap space (and
the iterative version uses constant stack space as well), but the prior version of the tree is lost. Alternatively,
as in the following Python example, we can reconstruct all ancestors of the inserted node; any reference to
the original tree root remains valid, making the tree a persistent data structure:

1 def binary_tree_insert(node, key, value):

2 if node == None:
3 return NodeTree(None, key, value, None)
4 if key == node.key:
5 return NodeTree(node.left, key, value, node.right)
6 if key < node.key:
7 return NodeTree(binary_tree_insert(node.left, key, value), node.key, node.value,
node.right)
8 return NodeTree(node.left, node.key, node.value, binary_tree_insert(node.right, key,
value))

The part that is rebuilt uses O(log n) space in the average case and O(n) in the worst case.

In either version, this operation requires time proportional to the height of the tree in the worst case, which
is O(log n) time in the average case over all trees, but O(n) time in the worst case.
Another way to explain insertion is that in order to insert a new node in the tree, its key is first compared
with that of the root. If its key is less than the root’s, it is then compared with the key of the root’s left child.
If its key is greater, it is compared with the root’s right child. This process continues, until the new node is
compared with a leaf node, and then it is added as this node’s right or left child, depending on its key: if the
key is less than the leaf’s key, then it is inserted as the leaf’s left child, otherwise as the leaf’s right child.

There are other ways of inserting nodes into a binary tree, but this is the only way of inserting nodes at the
leaves and at the same time preserving the BST structure.

Deletion

When removing a node from a binary search tree it is mandatory to maintain the inorder sequence of the
nodes. There are many possibilities to do this. However, the following method which has been proposed by
T. Hibbard in 1962[5] guarantees that the heights of the subject subtrees are changed by at most one. There
are three possible cases to consider:

1. Deleting a node with no children: simply remove the node from the tree.
2. Deleting a node with one child: remove the node and replace it with its child.
3. Deleting a node D with two children: choose either D’s inorder predecessor[note 3] or inorder
successor[note 4] E (see figure). Instead of deleting D, overwrite its key and value with
E’s.[note 5] If E does not have a child, remove E from its previous parent G; if E has a child F,
it is a right child, so that it is to replace E at G.

Deleting a node D with two children from a binary search tree. First the leftmost node
in the right subtree, the inorder successor E, is identified. Its value is copied into the
node D being deleted.[note 5] The inorder successor can then easily be deleted
because it has at most one child (which in the general unbalanced case may be a
subtree).
The same method works symmetrically using the inorder predecessor C.

In all cases, when D happens to be the root, make the replacement node root again.

Nodes with two children (case 3) are harder to delete (see figure). A node D’s inorder successor is its right
subtree’s leftmost child, say E,[note 4] and a node’s inorder predecessor[note 3] is the left subtree’s rightmost
child, C say. In either case, such a node E or C will not have a left resp. right child, so it can be deleted
according to one of the two simpler cases 1 or 2 above.

Consistently using the inorder successor or the inorder predecessor for every instance of the two-child case
can lead to an unbalanced tree, so some implementations select one or the other at different times.

Runtime analysis: Although this operation does not always traverse the tree down to a leaf, this is always a
possibility; thus in the worst case it requires time proportional to the height of the tree. It does not require
more, even when the node has two children, since it still follows a single path and does not visit any node
twice.
 1 def find_min(self):
2 """Get minimum node in a subtree."""
3 current_node = self
4 while current_node.left_child:
5 current_node = current_node.left_child
6 return current_node
7
8 def replace_node_in_parent(self, new_value=None) -> None:
9 if self.parent:
10 if self == self.parent.left_child:
11 self.parent.left_child = new_value
12 else:
13 self.parent.right_child = new_value
14 if new_value:
15 new_value.parent = self.parent
16
17 def binary_tree_delete(self, key) -> None:
18 if key < self.key:
19 self.left_child.binary_tree_delete(key)
20 return
21 if key > self.key:
22 self.right_child.binary_tree_delete(key)
23 return
24 # Delete the key here
25 if self.left_child and self.right_child: # If both children are present
26 successor = self.right_child.find_min()
27 self.key = successor.key
28 successor.binary_tree_delete(successor.key)
29 elif self.left_child: # If the node has only a *left* child
30 self.replace_node_in_parent(self.left_child)
31 elif self.right_child: # If the node has only a *right* child
32 self.replace_node_in_parent(self.right_child)
33 else:
34 self.replace_node_in_parent(None) # This node has no children

Parallel algorithms

There are also parallel algorithms for binary search trees, including inserting/deleting multiple elements,
construction from array, filter with certain predicator, flatten to an array, merging/substracting/intersecting
two trees, etc. These algorithms can be implemented using join-based tree algorithms, which can also keep
the tree balanced using several balancing schemes (including AVL tree, red–black tree, weight-balanced
tree and treap) .

Examples of applications

Sort

A binary search tree can be used to implement a simple sorting algorithm. Similar to heapsort, we insert all
the values we wish to sort into a new ordered data structure—in this case a binary search tree—and then
traverse it in order.

The worst-case time of build_binary_tree is O(n 2)—if you feed it a sorted list of values, it chains
them into a linked list with no left subtrees. For example, build_binary_tree([1, 2, 3, 4,
5]) yields the tree (1 (2 (3 (4 (5))))).

There are several schemes for overcoming this flaw with simple binary trees; the most common is the self-
balancing binary search tree. If this same procedure is done using such a tree, the overall worst-case time is
O(n log n), which is asymptotically optimal for a comparison sort. In practice, the added overhead in time
and space for a tree-based sort (particularly for node allocation) make it inferior to other asymptotically
optimal sorts such as heapsort for static list sorting. On the other hand, it is one of the most efficient
methods of incremental sorting, adding items to a list over time while keeping the list sorted at all times.

Priority queue operations

Binary search trees can serve as priority queues: structures that allow insertion of arbitrary key as well as
lookup and deletion of the minimum (or maximum) key. Insertion works as previously explained. Find-min
walks the tree, following left pointers as far as it can without hitting a leaf:

// Precondition: T is not a leaf

function find-min(T):
while hasLeft(T):
T ? left(T)
return key(T)

Find-max is analogous: follow right pointers as far as possible. Delete-min (max) can simply look up the
minimum (maximum), then delete it. This way, insertion and deletion both take logarithmic time, just as
they do in a binary heap, but unlike a binary heap and most other priority queue implementations, a single
tree can support all of find-min, find-max, delete-min and delete-max at the same time, making binary
search trees suitable as double-ended priority queues.[3]:156

Types
There are many types of binary search trees. AVL trees and red–black trees are both forms of self-balancing
binary search trees. A splay tree is a binary search tree that automatically moves frequently accessed
elements nearer to the root. In a treap (tree heap), each node also holds a (randomly chosen) priority and the
parent node has higher priority than its children. Tango trees are trees optimized for fast searches. T-trees
are binary search trees optimized to reduce storage space overhead, widely used for in-memory databases

A degenerate tree is a tree where for each parent node, there is only one associated child node. It is
unbalanced and, in the worst case, performance degrades to that of a linked list. If your add node function
does not handle re-balancing, then you can easily construct a degenerate tree by feeding it with data that is
already sorted. What this means is that in a performance measurement, the tree will essentially behave like a
linked list data structure.

Performance comparisons

D. A. Heger (2004)[6] presented a performance comparison of binary search trees. Treap was found to have
the best average performance, while red–black tree was found to have the smallest number of performance
variations.

Optimal binary search trees

If a search tree is not intended to be modified, and it is known exactly how often each item will be
accessed, it is possible to construct[7] an optimal binary search tree, which is a search tree where the
average cost of looking up an item (the expected search cost) is minimized.
Even if we only have estimates of the search costs,
such a system can considerably speed up lookups on
average. For example, if we have a BST of English
words used in a spell checker, we might balance the
tree based on word frequency in text corpora, placing
words like the near the root and words like agerasia
near the leaves. Such a tree might be compared with
Huffman trees, which similarly seek to place
frequently used items near the root in order to produce
a dense information encoding; however, Huffman
Tree rotations are very common internal operations
trees store data elements only in leaves, and these
in binary trees to keep perfect, or near-to-perfect,
elements need not be ordered. internal balance in the tree.

If the sequence in which the elements in the tree will

be accessed is unknown in advance, splay trees can
be used which are asymptotically as good as any static search tree we can construct for any particular
sequence of lookup operations.

Alphabetic trees are Huffman trees with the additional constraint on order, or, equivalently, search trees with
the modification that all elements are stored in the leaves. Faster algorithms exist for optimal alphabetic
binary trees (OABTs).

See also
Binary search algorithm
Search tree
Self-balancing binary search tree
AVL tree
Red–black tree
Randomized binary search tree
Tango tree
Join-based tree algorithms
Treap
Weight-balanced tree

Notes
1. Although the "efficiency" of the search and insert can highly depend on the order in which
the elements or keys are inserted since the a unbalanced binary tree, if inserted in a way
which forms a singly linked list like structure, has the same (worst-case) complexity as a
singly linked list, although not on average where it is logarithmic.
2. The notion of an average BST is made precise as follows. Let a random BST be one built
using only insertions out of a sequence of unique elements in random order (all
permutations equally likely); then the expected height of the tree is O(log |Nodes|). If
deletions are allowed as well as insertions, "little is known about the average height of a
binary search tree".[1]:300
3. Case 1: If there exists a left sub-tree of a given node A, the inorder predecessor of the node
A is the rightmost node (with max key) within A’s left sub-tree.

// If NULL is returned, it indicates that there isn’t any

// left sub-tree, hence Case 1 failed.
 Node *inorder_predecessor(Node *input_node){
Node *temp_node = input_node;
if (temp_node->left != NULL) {
do {
temp_node = temp_node->left;
} while(temp_node->left != NULL);
} else {
return NULL;
}
return temp_node;
}

This approach is essentially the same as Part A given in section #Advancing to the next or
previous node with dir == RIGHT.

Case 2:
If there does not exist a left sub-tree for a given node A, we’ll traverse the Binary Search
Tree from the root until A, and the inorder predecessor of A is the node in which A’s sub-tree
exists as its right node i.e. the last or recent parent in which A exists within its right sub-tree.

Node *inorder_predecessor(Node *input_node) {

// If NULL is returned, there isn’t inorder predecessor
// for the given 'input_node' with case 2’s traversal technique.
Node *last_right_turn_parent = NULL;
Node *temp_node = root_bst;
while (temp_node->key != input_node->key) {
if (input_node->key > temp_node->key) {
last_right_turn_parent = temp_node;
temp_node = temp_node->right;
} else {
temp_node = temp_node->left;
}
}
return last_right_turn_parent;
}

This approach satisfies the same functionality as Part B in section #Advancing to the next
or previous node with dir == RIGHT. But it has two disadvantages:

1. It requires knowledge of the user data, here: key and comparison function, which is not
needed by the mentioned.
2. The mentioned has an average complexity of compared to of this
approach here in the footnote.
4. Case 1:
If there exists a right sub-tree for a given node A, the inorder successor of A is the leftmost
node (with min key) within the sub-tree of A’s right sub-tree.

// If NULL is returned, it indicates that isn’t

// any right child for 'input_node, hence case 1 is failed.
Node *inorder_successor(Node *input_node){
Node *temp_node = input_node;
if (temp_node->right != NULL) {
do {
temp_node = temp_node->right;
} while (temp_node->right != NULL);
} else { return NULL; }
return temp_node;
}

This approach is essentially the same as Part A given in section #Advancing to the next or
previous node with dir == LEFT.
 Case 2:
If there doesn’t exist a right sub-tree for a given node A, to find the inorder successor, we'll
have to traverse to A from the root, and the inorder successor of A is the node whose right
child is the sub-tree where A exists i.e. the recent or last node where right-path or right-node
is chosen during traversal to reach A.

Node *inorder_successor(Node *input_node) {

Node *temp_node = root_bst;
// If NULL is returned, there isn’t any inorder successor
// for the given node using case 2’s traversal technique.
Node *last_left_turn_parent = NULL;
while (temp_node->key != input_node->key) {
if (temp_node->key < input_node->key) {
last_left_turn_parent = temp_node;
temp_node = temp_node->right;
} else {
temp_node = temp_node->left
}
}
return last_left_turn_parent;
}

This approach satisfies the same functionality as Part B in section #Advancing to the next
or previous node with dir == LEFT. But it has two disadvantages:

1. It requires knowledge of the user data, here: key and comparison function, which is not
needed by the mentioned.
2. The mentioned has an average complexity of compared to of this
approach here in the footnote.
5. Of course, a generic software package has to work the other way around: It has to leave the
user data completely untouched, has to detach node E from the tree and then to furnish E
with all the BST links to and from D – this way having D removed out of the tree.

References
1. Cormen, Thomas H.; Leiserson, Charles E.; Rivest, Ronald L.; Stein, Clifford (2009) [1990].
Introduction to Algorithms (3rd ed.). MIT Press and McGraw-Hill. ISBN 0-262-03384-4.
2. Ben Pfaff Introduction
3. Mehlhorn, Kurt; Sanders, Peter (2008). Algorithms and Data Structures: The Basic Toolbox
(http://people.mpi-inf.mpg.de/~mehlhorn/ftp/Toolbox/SortedSequences.pdf) (PDF). Springer.
4. Trubetskoy, Gregory. "Linus on understanding pointers" (https://grisha.org/blog/2013/04/02/li
nus-on-understanding-pointers/). Retrieved 21 February 2019.
5. Robert Sedgewick, Kevin Wayne: Algorithms Fourth Edition. Pearson Education, 2011,
ISBN 978-0-321-57351-3, p. 410.
6. Heger, Dominique A. (2004), "A Disquisition on The Performance Behavior of Binary Search
Tree Data Structures" (https://web.archive.org/web/20140327140251/http://www.cepis.org/u
pgrade/files/full-2004-V.pdf) (PDF), European Journal for the Informatics Professional, 5 (5):
67–75, archived from the original (http://www.cepis.org/upgrade/files/full-2004-V.pdf) (PDF)
on 2014-03-27, retrieved 2010-10-16
7. Gonnet, Gaston. "Optimal Binary Search Trees" (https://web.archive.org/web/201410120335
37/http://linneus20.ethz.ch:8080/4_7_1.html). Scientific Computation. ETH Zürich. Archived
from the original (http://linneus20.ethz.ch:8080/4_7_1.html) on 12 October 2014. Retrieved
1 December 2013.
Further reading
This article incorporates public domain material from the NIST document: Black, Paul E.
"Binary Search Tree" (https://xlinux.nist.gov/dads/HTML/binarySearchTree.html). Dictionary
of Algorithms and Data Structures.
Cormen, Thomas H.; Leiserson, Charles E.; Rivest, Ronald L.; Stein, Clifford (2001). "12:
Binary search trees, 15.5: Optimal binary search trees". Introduction to Algorithms (2nd ed.).
MIT Press & McGraw-Hill. pp. 253–272, 356–363. ISBN 0-262-03293-7.
Jarc, Duane J. (3 December 2005). "Binary Tree Traversals" (https://web.archive.org/web/20
140227082917/http://nova.umuc.edu/~jarc/idsv/lesson1.html). Interactive Data Structure
Visualizations. University of Maryland. Archived from the original (http://nova.umuc.edu/~jar
c/idsv/lesson1.html) on 27 February 2014. Retrieved 30 April 2006.
Knuth, Donald (1997). "6.2.2: Binary Tree Searching". The Art of Computer Programming. 3:
"Sorting and Searching" (3rd ed.). Addison-Wesley. pp. 426–458. ISBN 0-201-89685-0.
Long, Sean. "Binary Search Tree" (http://employees.oneonta.edu/zhangs/PowerPointPlatfor
m/resources/samples/binarysearchtree.ppt) (PPT). Data Structures and Algorithms
Visualization-A PowerPoint Slides Based Approach. SUNY Oneonta.
Parlante, Nick (2001). "Binary Trees" (http://cslibrary.stanford.edu/110/BinaryTrees.html). CS
Education Library. Stanford University.

External links
Ben Pfaff: An Introduction to Binary Search Trees and Balanced Trees. (ftp://ftp.gnu.org/gnu/
avl/avl-2.0.3.pdf.gz) (PDF; 1675 kB) 2004.
Binary Tree Visualizer (http://btv.melezinek.cz) (JavaScript animation of various BT-based
data structures)

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