CS 332: Algorithms

Red-Black Trees

David Luebke 1
06/06/24
 Review: Binary Search Trees
● Binary Search Trees (BSTs) are an important
data structure for dynamic sets
● In addition to satellite data, eleements have:
■ key: an identifying field inducing a total ordering
■ left: pointer to a left child (may be NULL)
■ right: pointer to a right child (may be NULL)
■ p: pointer to a parent node (NULL for root)

David Luebke 2
06/06/24
 Review: Binary Search Trees
● BST property:
key[left(x)]  key[x]  key[right(x)]
● Example:

B H

A D K

David Luebke 3
06/06/24
 Review: Inorder Tree Walk
● An inorder walk prints the set in sorted order:
TreeWalk(x)
TreeWalk(left[x]);
print(x);
TreeWalk(right[x]);
■ Easy to show by induction on the BST property
■ Preorder tree walk: print root, then left, then right
■ Postorder tree walk: print left, then right, then root

David Luebke 4
06/06/24
 Review: BST Search
TreeSearch(x, k)
if (x = NULL or k = key[x])
return x;
if (k < key[x])
return TreeSearch(left[x], k);
else
return TreeSearch(right[x], k);

David Luebke 5
06/06/24
 Review: BST Search (Iterative)
IterativeTreeSearch(x, k)
while (x != NULL and k != key[x])
if (k < key[x])
x = left[x];
else
x = right[x];
return x;

David Luebke 6
06/06/24
 Review: BST Insert
● Adds an element x to the tree so that the
binary search tree property continues to hold
● The basic algorithm
■ Like the search procedure above
■ Insert x in place of NULL
■ Use a “trailing pointer” to keep track of where you
came from (like inserting into singly linked list)
● Like search, takes time O(h), h = tree height

David Luebke 7
06/06/24
 Review: Sorting With BSTs
● Basic algorithm:
■ Insert elements of unsorted array from 1..n
■ Do an inorder tree walk to print in sorted order
● Running time:
■ Best case: (n lg n) (it’s a comparison sort)
■ Worst case: O(n2)
■ Average case: O(n lg n) (it’s a quicksort!)

David Luebke 8
06/06/24
 Review: Sorting With BSTs
● Average case analysis for i=1 to n
TreeInsert(A[i]);
■ It’s a form of quicksort! InorderTreeWalk(root);

3 1 8 2 6 7 5 3

1 2 8 6 7 5 1 8

2 6 7 5 2 6

5 7 5 7

David Luebke 9
06/06/24
 Review: More BST Operations
● Minimum:
■ Find leftmost node in tree
● Successor:
■ x has a right subtree: successor is minimum node in right
subtree
■ x has no right subtree: successor is first ancestor of x
whose left child is also ancestor of x
○ Intuition: As long as you move to the left up the tree, you’re
visiting smaller nodes.
● Predecessor: similar to successor

David Luebke 10
06/06/24
 Review: More BST Operations
● Delete:
■ x has no children: F
○ Remove x B H
■ x has one child:
A D K
○ Splice out x
Example: delete K
■ x has two children: C or H or B
○ Swap x with successor
○ Perform case 1 or 2 to delete it

David Luebke 11
06/06/24
 Red-Black Trees
● Red-black trees:
■ Binary search trees augmented with node color
■ Operations designed to guarantee that the height
h = O(lg n)
● First: describe the properties of red-black trees
● Then: prove that these guarantee h = O(lg n)
● Finally: describe operations on red-black trees

David Luebke 12
06/06/24
 Red-Black Properties
● The red-black properties:
1. Every node is either red or black
2. Every leaf (NULL pointer) is black
○ Note: this means every “real” node has 2 children

3. If a node is red, both children are black

4. Every path from node to descendent leaf

David Luebke 13
06/06/24
 Red-Black Trees
● Put example on board and verify properties:
1. Every node is either red or black
2. Every leaf (NULL pointer) is black
3. If a node is red, both children are black
4. Every path from node to descendent leaf contains
the same number of black nodes
5. The root is always black
● black-height: # black nodes on path to leaf
■ Label example with h and bh values

David Luebke 14
06/06/24
 Height of Red-Black Trees
● What is the minimum black-height of a node
with height h?
● A: a height-h node has black-height  h/2
● Theorem: A red-black tree with n internal
nodes has height h  2 lg(n + 1)
● How do you suppose we’ll prove this?

David Luebke 15
06/06/24
 RB Trees: Proving Height Bound
● Prove: n-node RB tree has height h  2 lg(n+1)
● Claim: A subtree rooted at a node x contains
at least 2bh(x) - 1 internal nodes
■ Proof by induction on height h
■ Base step: x has height 0 (i.e., NULL leaf node)
○ What is bh(x)?

David Luebke 16
06/06/24
 RB Trees: Proving Height Bound
● Prove: n-node RB tree has height h  2 lg(n+1)
● Claim: A subtree rooted at a node x contains at
least 2bh(x) - 1 internal nodes
■ Proof by induction on height h
■ Base step: x has height 0 (i.e., NULL leaf node)
○ What is bh(x)?
○ A: 0
○ So…subtree contains 2bh(x) - 1
= 20 - 1
= 0 internal nodes (TRUE)

David Luebke 17
06/06/24
 RB Trees: Proving Height Bound
● Inductive proof that subtree at node x contains
at least 2bh(x) - 1 internal nodes
■ Inductive step: x has positive height and 2 children
○ Each child has black-height of bh(x) or bh(x)-1 (Why?)
○ The height of a child = (height of x) - 1
○ So the subtrees rooted at each child contain at least
2bh(x) - 1 - 1 internal nodes
○ Thus subtree at x contains
(2bh(x) - 1 - 1) + (2bh(x) - 1 - 1) + 1
= 2•2bh(x)-1 - 1 = 2bh(x) - 1 nodes

David Luebke 18
06/06/24
 RB Trees: Proving Height Bound
● Thus at the root of the red-black tree:
n  2bh(root) - 1 (Why?)
n  2h/2 - 1 (Why?)
lg(n+1)  h/2 (Why?)
h  2 lg(n + 1) (Why?)

Thus h = O(lg n)

David Luebke 19
06/06/24
 RB Trees: Worst-Case Time
● So we’ve proved that a red-black tree has
O(lg n) height
● Corollary: These operations take O(lg n) time:
■ Minimum(), Maximum()
■ Successor(), Predecessor()
■ Search()
● Insert() and Delete():
■ Will also take O(lg n) time
■ But will need special care since they modify tree

David Luebke 20
06/06/24