What are Trees?

In computer science, a tree is a widely used data structure that represents a hierarchical structure. It consists of a set of nodes connected by edges. The topmost node in a tree is called the root node, and each node in the tree can have zero or more child nodes.

The tree structure is commonly used to represent hierarchical relationships, such as organization charts, file systems, and family trees.

Properties of Trees

Trees have several important properties:

• Root: The topmost node in a tree.
• Parent: A node that has one or more child nodes.
• Child: A node directly connected to another node when moving away from the root.
• Leaf: A node with no child nodes.
• Height: The number of edges on the longest path from the root to a leaf.
• Depth: The number of edges on the path from a node to the root.

Common Types of Trees

There are various types of trees, each with its own characteristics and applications:

• Binary Tree: A tree in which each node can have at most two children.
• Binary Search Tree: A binary tree in which the left child node is less than the parent node, and the right child node is greater than the parent node.
• AVL Tree: A self-balancing binary search tree with the property that the heights of the two child subtrees of any node differ by at most one.

Understanding the properties and types of trees is essential for efficiently solving problems and implementing algorithms that involve tree structures.