Question

I want to implement a method that will enable me to find a node in a tree. The way I do it is recursively using global variables to know when to stop.

I have the class:

class Node    // represents a node in the tree
{ 
     // constructor
     public Node() {
          Children = new List<Node>();
     }

     public List<Node> Children; 
     public string Name;
     public string Content;            
}

And the method I have right now is:

    private bool IsNodeFound = false; // global variable that I use to decide when to stop

    // method to find a particular node in the tree
    private void Find(Node node, string stringToFind, Action<Node> foundNode)
    {
        if(IsNodeFound)
           return;

        if (node.Content.Contains(stringToFind)){
            foundNode(node); 
            IsNodeFound =true;               
        }

        foreach (var child in node.Children)
        {
            if (child.Content.Contains(stringToFind)){
                foundNode(node);
                IsNodeFound =true;               
            }

            Find(child, stringToFind, foundNode);
        }

    }

and the way I use the Find method is like:

   // root is a node that contain children and those children also contain children
   // root is the "root" of the tree
   IsNodeFound =false;
   Node nodeToFind = null;
   Find(root, "some string to look for", (x)=> nodeToFind=x);

So my question is how can I make this method more elegant. I will like the signature of the method to look like:

   public Node FindNode(Node rootNode);

I think it is to redundant what am I doing and there is probably a better way of creating that method. Or perhaps I could alter the Node class so that I can achieve the same thing with a linq query.

Answer 1

I would do it this way:

Write an instance method to generate a subtree of a node (you could make it an extension if you don’t control the Node class):

public IEnumerable<Node> GetNodeAndDescendants() // Note that this method is lazy
{
     return new[] { this }
            .Concat(Children.SelectMany(child => child.GetNodeAndDescendants()));    
}

Then you can just find nodes with a little bit of LINQ:

var foundNode = rootNode.GetNodeAndDescendants()
                        .FirstOrDefault(node => node.Content.Contains(stringToFind));

if(foundNode != null)
{
    DoSomething(foundNode);
}