Question

I have a height method that able to find the height of Binary tree but not sure how to return the deepest node of a binary tree(multiple nodes if same depth).

BinaryNode.new(1,BinaryNode.new(2,leaf,leaf),BinaryNode.new(3,leaf,leaf))

where leaf represents empty

the height for this tree is 2 and the deepest nodes are 2,3 (same depth)

class BinaryNode 
  include Enumerable
  def initialize(element,lchild,rchild)
    @element, @lchild, @rchild = element, lchild, rchild
  end
  def deepestNode
    if self.nil?
      0
    else
      height1=@lchild.height+1
      height2=@lchild.height+1
    end
      height=[height1,height2].max
      height
    end
  end
end

Answer 1

Assumptions:

• The Binary Tree is actually the root node
• child_nodes returns the collection of child nodes as an array

---

class BinaryNode
  attr_reader :element

  def initialize(element,lchild,rchild)
    @element, @lchild, @rchild = element, lchild, rchild
  end

  def height
    if @lchild.nil? && @rchild.nil?
      return 0
    else
     [@lchild, @rchild].collect {|n| n.nil ? 0 : n.height + 1 }.max      
    end
  end

  def deepest_nodes
    return [self] if self.height == 1

    [@lchild, @rchild].select {|n| !n.nil? && (n.height == self.height - 1)}.collect {|n| n.deepest_nodes}.flatten
  end
end

---

Refactor:

class BinaryNode
  attr_reader :element

  def initialize(element,lchild,rchild)
    @element, @lchild, @rchild = element, lchild, rchild
  end

  def child_nodes
    [@lchild, @rchild].compact
  end

  def height
    if self.child_nodes.empty?
      return 0
    else
      self.child_nodes.collect {|n| n.height + 1 }.max      
    end
  end

  def deepest_nodes
    return [self] if self.depth == 1

    self.child_nodes.select {|n| n.height == self.height - 1}.collect {|n| n.deepest_nodes}.flatten
  end
end

---

Getting the elements:

BinaryNode.new(1,BinaryNode.new(2,leaf,leaf),BinaryNode.new(3,leaf,leaf)).deepest_nodes.collect {|n| n.element }