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Removing Items From A Binary Search Tree

Removing items from a binary search tree involves ensuring the tree remains ordered after deletion. For leaf nodes, removal is simple as it does not affect other nodes. For non-leaf nodes, the node is moved down by swapping with the smallest child in its right subtree until it becomes a leaf and can be deleted. This process uses swaps to push the node further down until it reaches the bottom of the tree.

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Jaladhi Mathur
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40 views

Removing Items From A Binary Search Tree

Removing items from a binary search tree involves ensuring the tree remains ordered after deletion. For leaf nodes, removal is simple as it does not affect other nodes. For non-leaf nodes, the node is moved down by swapping with the smallest child in its right subtree until it becomes a leaf and can be deleted. This process uses swaps to push the node further down until it reaches the bottom of the tree.

Uploaded by

Jaladhi Mathur
Copyright
© Attribution Non-Commercial (BY-NC)
Available Formats
Download as DOC, PDF, TXT or read online on Scribd
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Removing Items from a Binary Search Tree

When removing an item from a search tree, it is imperative that the tree which remains satisfies
the data ordering criterion. If the item to be removed is in a leaf node, then it is fairly easy to
remove that item from the tree since doing so does not disturb the relative order of any of the
other items in the tree.

For example, consider the binary search tree shown in Figure (a). Suppose we wish to remove
the node labeled 4. Since node 4 is a leaf, its subtrees are empty. When we remove it from the
tree, the tree remains a valid search tree as shown in Figure (b).

Figure: Removing a Leaf Node from a Binary Search Tree

To remove a non-leaf node, we move it down in the tree until it becomes a leaf node since a leaf
node is easily deleted. To move a node down we swap it with another node which is further
down in the tree. For example, consider the search tree shown in Figure (a). Node 1 is not a
leaf since it has an empty left subtree but a non-empty right subtree. To remove node 1, we swap
it with the smallest key in its right subtree, which in this case is node 2, Figure (b). Since
node 1 is now a leaf, it is easily deleted. Notice that the resulting tree remains a valid search tree,
as shown in Figure (c).

Figure: Removing a Non-Leaf Node from a Binary Search Tree


To move a non-leaf node down in the tree, we either swap it with the smallest key in the right
subtree or with the largest one in the left subtree. At least one such swap is always possible, since
the node is a non-leaf and therefore at least one of its subtrees is non-empty. If after the swap, the
node to be deleted is not a leaf, the we push it further down the tree with yet another swap.
Eventually, the node must reach the bottom of the tree where it can be deleted

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