Question

I’ve scoured the internet for help on this problem but I need help. This isn’t exactly an ordinary insertion problem for a binary tree, since we don’t get to work directly with the tree structure itself. My prof wrote that himself and has given us functions we can use to write functions pertaining to binary trees. As such, I can’t use nodes and pointers and things. Also this is in C++.

Anyway, so here is the description of the recursive function I have to write ( along with my starting attempt at working with the problem). Notice it returns a new tree entirely, it does not actually add something to the existing tree.

tree_t insert_tree(int elt, tree_t tree)
{
    /* 
    // REQUIRES; tree is a sorted binary tree
    // EFFECTS: returns a new tree with elt inserted at a leaf such that 
    //          the resulting tree is also a sorted binary tree.
    //
    //          for example, inserting 1 into the tree:
    //
    //                           4
    //                         /   \
    //                        /      \
    //                       2        5
    //                      / \      / \
    //                         3 
    //                        / \
    //
    // would yield
    //                           4
    //                         /   \
    //                        /      \
    //                       2        5
    //                      / \      / \
    //                     1   3 
    //                    / \ / \
    // 
    // Hint: an in-order traversal of a sorted binary tree is always a
    //       sorted list, and there is only one unique location for
    //       any element to be inserted.
    */

if (elt < elt(tree_left(tree)){
    return insert_tree(tree_left(left));
} else {
    return insert_tree(tree_right(right));
}
}

And here are the functions we can use:

extern bool tree_isEmpty(tree_t tree);
    // EFFECTS: returns true if tree is empty, false otherwise

extern tree_t tree_make();
    // EFFECTS: creates an empty tree.

extern tree_t tree_make(int elt, tree_t left, tree_t right);
    // EFFECTS: creates a new tree, with elt as it's element, left as
    //          its left subtree, and right as its right subtree

extern int tree_elt(tree_t tree);
    // REQUIRES: tree is not empty
    // EFFECTS: returns the element at the top of tree.

extern tree_t tree_left(tree_t tree);
    // REQUIRES: tree is not empty
    // EFFECTS: returns the left subtree of tree

extern tree_t tree_right(tree_t tree);
    // REQUIRES: tree is not empty
    // EFFECTS: returns the right subtree of tree

extern void tree_print(tree_t tree);
    // MODIFIES: cout
    // EFFECTS: prints tree to cout.

Answer 1

Inserting into a zero-element tree is easy:

return tree_make(elt, tree_make(), tree_make());

Inserting into a one-element tree is also easy:

tree_t new_node = tree_make(elt, tree_make(), tree_make());
if(elt < tree_elt(tree))
    return tree_make(tree_elt(tree), new_node, tree_right(tree));
else
    return tree_make(tree_elt(tree), tree_left(tree), new_node);

In general, to insert a new element, you’ll need to recreate all of its parents in this manner.

---

Part 2: Recursion

We have our base case (a zero-element tree). And we know how to attach a new subtree to the root of our existing tree.

So how to get the new subtree? Well, how about we just insert the element into the current subtree?

The following code will always attach the new element at the far left of the tree, but that should be trivial to correct once you understand it:

tree_t tree_insert(int elt, tree_t tree)
{
    if(tree_empty(tree)) //base case
        return tree_make(elt, tree_make(), tree_make());
    else
        return tree_make( // make a new node
            tree_elt(tree) // with the same value as the current one
            tree_insert(elt, tree_left(tree)) //insert into the left subtree
            tree_right(tree) // keep the right subtree the same
            );
}