Java Question
How do I calculate the number of "only child"-nodes in a binary tree?
NOTICE: this is homework-related, but I'm not tagging it as such because the 'homework' tag is marked as obselete (?)
Using the following class that implements a binary tree...
class TreeNode
{
private Object value;
private TreeNode left, right;
public TreeNode(Object initValue)
{
value = initValue;
left = null;
right = null;
}
public TreeNode(Object initValue, TreeNode initLeft, TreeNode initRight)
{
value = initValue;
left = initLeft;
right = initRight;
}
public Object getValue()
{
return value;
}
public TreeNode getLeft()
{
return left;
}
public TreeNode getRight()
{
return right;
}
public void setValue(Object theNewValue)
{
value = theNewValue;
}
public void setLeft(TreeNode theNewLeft)
{
left = theNewLeft;
}
public void setRight(TreeNode theNewRight)
{
right = theNewRight;
}
}
I need to calculate the number of nodes in the binary tree that are "only children," this being defined as a node that doesn't have another node stemming from its parent.
This is what I have so far:
public static int countOnlys(TreeNode t)
{
if(t == null)
return 0;
if(isAnOnlyChild(t))
return 1;
return countOnlys(t.getLeft()) + countOnlys(t.getRight());
}
I don't know how to implement the
booleanisAnOnlyChild(TreeNode t)Could someone please help me?
Answer Source
You are pretty close and have the traversal looking good but in your Treenode you do not have a link between a child and its parent. So You can not tell from say a left child if a sibling (right child) exists.
You could have a parent Treenode (along with left and right) so you could check how many children a given node's parent has. Or as ajp15243 suggested, instead use a method that checks how many children a given node has.
Some pseudo code of the latter:
//we still need to check if that only child has its own children
if hasOnlyChild(t)
return 1 + checkOnlys(left) + checkOnlys(right)
else
return checkOnlys(left) + checkOnlys(right)