Difference between revisions of "Tree (data structure)"
Karl Jones (Talk | contribs) (Created page with "In computer science, a '''tree''' is a widely used abstract data type (ADT) — or data structure implementing this ADT — that simulates a hierarchical tree stru...") |
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== External links == | == External links == |
Revision as of 17:08, 25 April 2016
In computer science, a tree is a widely used abstract data type (ADT) — or data structure implementing this ADT — that simulates a hierarchical tree structure, with a root value and subtrees of children with a parent node, represented as a set of linked nodes.
Description
A tree data structure can be defined recursively (locally) as a collection of nodes (starting at a root node), where each node is a data structure consisting of a value, together with a list of references to nodes (the "children"), with the constraints that no reference is duplicated, and none points to the root.
Alternatively, a tree can be defined abstractly as a whole (globally) as an ordered tree, with a value assigned to each node.
Both these perspectives are useful: while a tree can be analyzed mathematically as a whole, when actually represented as a data structure it is usually represented and worked with separately by node (rather than as a list of nodes and an adjacency list of edges between nodes, as one may represent a digraph, for instance).
For example, looking at a tree as a whole, one can talk about "the parent node" of a given node, but in general as a data structure a given node only contains the list of its children, but does not contain a reference to its parent (if any).
See also
- Abstract data type
- Branching factor
- Computer science
- Computing
- Data structure
- Tree (graph theory)
- Tree structure
External links
- Tree (data structure) @ Wikipedia