A selective traversal algorithm for binary search trees

  • Authors:
  • James R. Driscoll;Y. Edmund Lien

  • Affiliations:
  • Florida Technological Univ., Orlando;The Univ. of Kansas

  • Venue:
  • Communications of the ACM
  • Year:
  • 1978

Quantified Score

Hi-index 48.23

Visualization

Abstract

The problem of selecting data items from a binary search tree according to a list of range conditions is considered. The process of visiting a minimal number of nodes to retrieve data satisfying the range conditions is called selective traversal. Presented in this paper is an algorithm for selective traversal which uses a tag field for each node in the tree. The algorithm is particularly useful and efficient when examination of data is more time consuming than examination of a tag field.