Alt hvad du behøver at vide om trædatastrukturer
Når du først lærer at kode, er det almindeligt at lære arrays som "hoveddatastruktur".
Til sidst lærer du hash tables
også om. Hvis du forfølger en grad i datalogi, skal du tage en klasse om datastruktur. Du vil også lære om linked lists
, queues
og stacks
. Disse datastrukturer kaldes "lineære" datastrukturer, fordi de alle har en logisk start og en logisk slutning.
Når vi begynder at lære om, trees
og graphs
det kan blive virkelig forvirrende. Vi gemmer ikke data på en lineær måde. Begge datastrukturer gemmer data på en bestemt måde.
Dette indlæg er til at hjælpe dig med at forstå trædatastrukturen bedre og afklare enhver forvirring, du måtte have om den.
I denne artikel lærer vi:
- Hvad er et træ
- Eksempler på træer
- Dens terminologi, og hvordan det fungerer
- Sådan implementeres træstrukturer i kode.
Lad os starte denne læringsrejse. :)
Definition
Når du starter programmeringen, er det almindeligt at forstå de lineære datastrukturer bedre end datastrukturer som træer og grafer.
Træer er velkendte som en ikke-lineær datastruktur. De lagrer ikke data på en lineær måde. De organiserer data hierarkisk.
Lad os dykke ned i virkelige eksempler!
Hvad mener jeg, når jeg siger en hierarkisk måde?
Forestil dig et stamtræ med forhold fra alle generationer: bedsteforældre, forældre, børn, søskende osv. Vi organiserer ofte stamtræer hierarkisk.

Ovenstående tegning er mit stamtræ. Tossico, Akikazu, Hitomi,
og Takemi
er mine bedsteforældre.
Toshiaki
og Juliana
er mine forældre.
TK, Yuji, Bruno
, og Kaio
er mine forældres børn (mig og mine brødre).
En organisations struktur er et andet eksempel på et hierarki.

I HTML fungerer Document Object Model (DOM) som et træ.

Den HTML
tag indeholder andre tags. Vi har et head
mærke og et body
mærke. Disse tags indeholder specifikke elementer. Den head
tag har meta
og title
tags. Den body
tag har elementer, der viser i brugergrænsefladen, for eksempel h1
, a
, li
, etc.
En teknisk definition
A tree
er en samling enheder kaldet nodes
. Noder er forbundet med edges
. Hver node
indeholder et value
eller data
, og det kan eller ikke har et child node
.

Den first node
af den tree
kaldes root
. Hvis dette root node
er forbundet af en anden node
, root
er det så a parent node
og det tilsluttede node
er et child
.

Alle Tree nodes
er forbundet med kaldte links edges
. Det er en vigtig del af trees
, fordi det styrer forholdet mellem nodes
.

Leaves
er de sidste nodes
på a tree.
De er knuder uden børn. Ligesom virkelige træer, vi har den root
, branches
og til sidst leaves
.

Andre vigtige begreber at forstå er height
og depth
.
Den height
af a tree
er længden af den længste vej til en leaf
.
Den depth
af a node
er længden af stien til dens root
.
Terminologi resume
- Root er den øverste
node
aftree
- Edge er forbindelsen mellem to
nodes
- Barn er et,
node
der har enparent node
- Forælder er en,
node
der har enedge
til enchild node
- Blad er et
node
, der ikke har enchild node
itree
- Højde er længden af den længste vej til en
leaf
- Dybde er længden af stien til dens
root
Binære træer
Nu vil vi diskutere en bestemt type tree
. Vi kalder det binary tree
.
Så lad os se på et eksempel på en binary tree
.

Lad os kode et binært træ
Den første ting, vi skal huske på, når vi implementerer en, binary tree
er at det er en samling af nodes
. Hver node
har tre attributter: value
, left_child
, og right_child
.
Hvordan implementerer vi en simpel, binary tree
der initialiseres med disse tre egenskaber?
Lad os se.
class BinaryTree: def __init__(self, value): self.value = value self.left_child = None self.right_child = None
Her er det. Vores binary tree
klasse.
Når vi instantierer et objekt, videregiver vi value
(nodens data) som en parameter. Se på left_child
og right_child
. Begge er indstillet til None
.
Hvorfor?
For når vi skaber vores node
, har den ingen børn. Vi har bare node data
.
Lad os teste det:
tree = BinaryTree('a') print(tree.value) # a print(tree.left_child) # None print(tree.right_child) # None
Det er det.
Vi kan videregive string
' a
' som den value
til vores Binary Tree node
. Hvis vi udskriver value
, left_child
og right_child
vi kan se værdierne.
Let’s go to the insertion part. What do we need to do here?
We will implement a method to insert a new node
to the right
and to the left
.
Here are the rules:
- If the current
node
doesn’t have aleft child
, we just create a newnode
and set it to the current node’sleft_child
. - If it does have the
left child
, we create a new node and put it in the currentleft child
’s place. Allocate thisleft child node
to the new node’sleft child
.
Let’s draw it out. :)

Here’s the code:
def insert_left(self, value): if self.left_child == None: self.left_child = BinaryTree(value) else: new_node = BinaryTree(value) new_node.left_child = self.left_child self.left_child = new_node
Again, if the current node doesn’t have a left child
, we just create a new node and set it to the current node’s left_child
. Or else we create a new node and put it in the current left child
’s place. Allocate this left child node
to the new node’s left child
.
And we do the same thing to insert a right child node
.
def insert_right(self, value): if self.right_child == None: self.right_child = BinaryTree(value) else: new_node = BinaryTree(value) new_node.right_child = self.right_child self.right_child = new_node
Done. :)
But not entirely. We still need to test it.
Let’s build the followingtree
:

To summarize the illustration of this tree:
a
node
will be theroot
of ourbinary Tree
a
left child
isb
node
a
right child
isc
node
b
right child
isd
node
(b
node
doesn’t have aleft child
)c
left child
ise
node
c
right child
isf
node
- both
e
andf
nodes
do not have children
So here is the code for the tree
:
a_node = BinaryTree('a') a_node.insert_left('b') a_node.insert_right('c') b_node = a_node.left_child b_node.insert_right('d') c_node = a_node.right_child c_node.insert_left('e') c_node.insert_right('f') d_node = b_node.right_child e_node = c_node.left_child f_node = c_node.right_child print(a_node.value) # a print(b_node.value) # b print(c_node.value) # c print(d_node.value) # d print(e_node.value) # e print(f_node.value) # f
Insertion is done.
Now we have to think about tree
traversal.
We have two options here: Depth-First Search (DFS) and Breadth-First Search (BFS).
- DFS “is an algorithm for traversing or searching tree data structure. One starts at the root and explores as far as possible along each branch before backtracking.” — Wikipedia
- BFS “is an algorithm for traversing or searching tree data structure. It starts at the tree root and explores the neighbor nodes first, before moving to the next level neighbors.” — Wikipedia
So let’s dive into each tree traversal type.
Depth-First Search (DFS)
DFS explores a path all the way to a leaf before backtracking and exploring another path. Let’s take a look at an example with this type of traversal.

The result for this algorithm will be 1–2–3–4–5–6–7.
Why?
Let’s break it down.
- Start at the
root
(1). Print it.
2. Go to the left child
(2). Print it.
3. Then go to the left child
(3). Print it. (This node
doesn’t have any children)
4. Backtrack and go the right child
(4). Print it. (This node
doesn’t have any children)
5. Backtrack to the root
node
and go to the right child
(5). Print it.
6. Go to the left child
(6). Print it. (This node
doesn’t have any children)
7. Backtrack and go to the right child
(7). Print it. (This node
doesn’t have any children)
8. Done.
When we go deep to the leaf and backtrack, this is called DFS algorithm.
Now that we are familiar with this traversal algorithm, we will discuss types of DFS: pre-order
, in-order
, and post-order
.
Pre-order
This is exactly what we did in the above example.
- Print the value of the
node
. - Go to the
left child
and print it. This is if, and only if, it has aleft child
. - Go to the
right child
and print it. This is if, and only if, it has aright child
.
def pre_order(self): print(self.value) if self.left_child: self.left_child.pre_order() if self.right_child: self.right_child.pre_order()
In-order

The result of the in-order algorithm for this tree
example is 3–2–4–1–6–5–7.
The left first, the middle second, and the right last.
Now let’s code it.
def in_order(self): if self.left_child: self.left_child.in_order() print(self.value) if self.right_child: self.right_child.in_order()
- Go to the
left child
and print it. This is if, and only if, it has aleft child
. - Print the
node
’s value - Go to the
right child
and print it. This is if, and only if, it has aright child
.
Post-order

The result of the post order
algorithm for this tree
example is 3–4–2–6–7–5–1.
The left first, the right second, and the middle last.
Let’s code this.
def post_order(self): if self.left_child: self.left_child.post_order() if self.right_child: self.right_child.post_order() print(self.value)
- Go to the
left child
and print it. This is if, and only if, it has aleft child
. - Go to the
right child
and print it. This is if, and only if, it has aright child
. - Print the
node
’s value
Breadth-First Search (BFS)
BFS algorithm traverses the tree
level by level and depth by depth.

Here is an example that helps to better explain this algorithm:

So we traverse level by level. In this example, the result is 1–2–5–3–4–6–7.
- Level/Depth 0: only
node
with value 1 - Level/Depth 1:
nodes
with values 2 and 5 - Level/Depth 2:
nodes
with values 3, 4, 6, and 7
Now let’s code it.
def bfs(self): queue = Queue() queue.put(self) while not queue.empty(): current_node = queue.get() print(current_node.value) if current_node.left_child: queue.put(current_node.left_child) if current_node.right_child: queue.put(current_node.right_child)
To implement a BFS algorithm, we use the queue
data structure to help.
How does it work?
Here’s the explanation.

- First add the
root
node
into thequeue
with theput
method. - Iterate while the
queue
is not empty. - Get the first
node
in thequeue
, and then print its value. - Add both
left
andright
children
into thequeue
(if the currentnode
haschildren
). - Done. We will print the value of each
node,
level by level, with ourqueue
helper.
Binary Search tree
“Et binært søgetræ kaldes undertiden ordnede eller sorterede binære træer, og det holder dets værdier i sorteret rækkefølge, så opslag og andre operationer kan bruge princippet om binær søgning” - WikipediaEn vigtig egenskab ved a Binary Search Tree
er, at værdien af a Binary Search Tree
node
er større end værdien af dets afkom left child
, men mindre end værdien af dets afkom right child.
”

Her er en oversigt over ovenstående illustration:
- A er omvendt. De
subtree
7-5-8-6 behov for at være på den rigtige side, og desubtree
2-1-3 behov for at være på den venstre. - B er den eneste korrekte mulighed. Det tilfredsstiller
Binary Search Tree
ejendommen. - C har et problem: den
node
med værdien 4. Den skal være på venstre side af den,root
fordi den er mindre end 5.
Let’s code a Binary Search Tree!
Now it’s time to code!
What will we see here? We will insert new nodes, search for a value, delete nodes, and the balance of the tree
.
Let’s start.
Insertion: adding new nodes to our tree
Imagine that we have an empty tree
and we want to add new nodes
with the following values in this order: 50, 76, 21, 4, 32, 100, 64, 52.
The first thing we need to know is if 50 is the root
of our tree.

We can now start inserting node
by node
.
- 76 is greater than 50, so insert 76 on the right side.
- 21 is smaller than 50, so insert 21 on the left side.
- 4 is smaller than 50.
Node
with value 50 has aleft child
21. Since 4 is smaller than 21, insert it on the left side of thisnode
. - 32 is smaller than 50.
Node
with value 50 has aleft child
21. Since 32 is greater than 21, insert 32 on the right side of thisnode
. - 100 is greater than 50.
Node
with value 50 has aright child
76. Since 100 is greater than 76, insert 100 on the right side of thisnode
. - 64 is greater than 50.
Node
with value 50 has aright child
76. Since 64 is smaller than 76, insert 64 on the left side of thisnode
. - 52 is greater than 50.
Node
with value 50 has aright child
76. Since 52 is smaller than 76,node
with value 76 has aleft child
64. 52 is smaller than 64, so insert 54 on the left side of thisnode
.

Do you notice a pattern here?
Let’s break it down.
- Is the new
node
value greater or smaller than the currentnode
? - If the value of the new
node
is greater than the currentnode,
go to the rightsubtree
. If the currentnode
doesn’t have aright child
, insert it there, or else backtrack to step #1. - If the value of the new
node
is smaller than the currentnode
, go to the leftsubtree
. If the currentnode
doesn’t have aleft child
, insert it there, or else backtrack to step #1. - We did not handle special cases here. When the value of a new
node
is equal to the current value of thenode,
use rule number 3. Consider inserting equal values to the left side of thesubtree
.
Now let’s code it.
class BinarySearchTree: def __init__(self, value): self.value = value self.left_child = None self.right_child = None def insert_node(self, value): if value <= self.value and self.left_child: self.left_child.insert_node(value) elif value self.value and self.right_child: self.right_child.insert_node(value) else: self.right_child = BinarySearchTree(value)
It seems very simple.
The powerful part of this algorithm is the recursion part, which is on line 9 and line 13. Both lines of code call the insert_node
method, and use it for its left
and right
children
, respectively. Lines 11
and 15
are the ones that do the insertion for each child
.
Let’s search for the node value… Or not…
The algorithm that we will build now is about doing searches. For a given value (integer number), we will say if our Binary Search Tree
does or does not have that value.
An important item to note is how we defined the tree insertion algorithm. First we have our root
node
. All the left subtree
nodes
will have smaller values than the root
node
. And all the right subtree
nodes
will have values greater than the root
node
.
Let’s take a look at an example.
Imagine that we have this tree
.

Now we want to know if we have a node based on value 52.

Let’s break it down.
- We start with the
root
node
as our currentnode
. Is the given value smaller than the currentnode
value? If yes, then we will search for it on the leftsubtree
. - Is the given value greater than the current
node
value? If yes, then we will search for it on the rightsubtree
. - If rules #1 and #2 are both false, we can compare the current
node
value and the given value if they are equal. If the comparison returnstrue
, then we can say, “Yeah! Ourtree
has the given value,” otherwise, we say, “Nooo, it hasn’t.”
Now let’s code it.
class BinarySearchTree: def __init__(self, value): self.value = value self.left_child = None self.right_child = None def find_node(self, value): if value self.value and self.right_child: return self.right_child.find_node(value) return value == self.value
Let’s beak down the code:
- Lines 8 and 9 fall under rule #1.
- Lines 10 and 11 fall under rule #2.
- Line 13 falls under rule #3.
How do we test it?
Let’s create our Binary Search Tree
by initializing the root
node
with the value 15.
bst = BinarySearchTree(15)
And now we will insert many new nodes
.
bst.insert_node(10) bst.insert_node(8) bst.insert_node(12) bst.insert_node(20) bst.insert_node(17) bst.insert_node(25) bst.insert_node(19)
For each inserted node
, we will test if our find_node
method really works.
print(bst.find_node(15)) # True print(bst.find_node(10)) # True print(bst.find_node(8)) # True print(bst.find_node(12)) # True print(bst.find_node(20)) # True print(bst.find_node(17)) # True print(bst.find_node(25)) # True print(bst.find_node(19)) # True
Yeah, it works for these given values! Let’s test for a value that doesn’t exist in our Binary Search Tree
.
print(bst.find_node(0)) # False
Oh yeah.
Our search is done.
Deletion: removing and organizing
Deletion is a more complex algorithm because we need to handle different cases. For a given value, we need to remove the node
with this value. Imagine the following scenarios for this node
: it has no children
, has a single child
, or has two children
.
- Scenario #1: A
node
with nochildren
(leaf
node
).
# |50| |50| # / \ / \ # |30| |70| (DELETE 20) ---> |30| |70| # / \ \ # |20| |40| |40|
If the node
we want to delete has no children, we simply delete it. The algorithm doesn’t need to reorganize the tree
.
- Scenario #2: A
node
with just one child (left
orright
child).
# |50| |50| # / \ / \ # |30| |70| (DELETE 30) ---> |20| |70| # / # |20|
In this case, our algorithm needs to make the parent of the node
point to the child
node. If the node
is the left child
, we make the parent of the left child
point to the child
. If the node
is the right child
of its parent, we make the parent of the right child
point to the child
.
- Scenario #3: A
node
with two children.
# |50| |50| # / \ / \ # |30| |70| (DELETE 30) ---> |40| |70| # / \ / # |20| |40| |20|
When the node
has 2 children, we need to find the node
with the minimum value, starting from the node
’sright child
. We will put this node
with minimum value in the place of the node
we want to remove.
It’s time to code.
def remove_node(self, value, parent): if value < self.value and self.left_child: return self.left_child.remove_node(value, self) elif value self.value and self.right_child: return self.right_child.remove_node(value, self) elif value > self.value: return False else: if self.left_child is None and self.right_child is None and self == parent.left_child: parent.left_child = None self.clear_node() elif self.left_child is None and self.right_child is None and self == parent.right_child: parent.right_child = None self.clear_node() elif self.left_child and self.right_child is None and self == parent.left_child: parent.left_child = self.left_child self.clear_node() elif self.left_child and self.right_child is None and self == parent.right_child: parent.right_child = self.left_child self.clear_node() elif self.right_child and self.left_child is None and self == parent.left_child: parent.left_child = self.right_child self.clear_node() elif self.right_child and self.left_child is None and self == parent.right_child: parent.right_child = self.right_child self.clear_node() else: self.value = self.right_child.find_minimum_value() self.right_child.remove_node(self.value, self) return True
- First: Note the parameters
value
andparent
. We want to find thenode
that has thisvalue
, and thenode
’s parent is important to the removal of thenode
. - Second: Note the returning value. Our algorithm will return a boolean value. It returns
True
if it finds thenode
and removes it. Otherwise it will returnFalse
. - From line 2 to line 9: We start searching for the
node
that has thevalue
that we are looking for. If thevalue
is smaller than thecurrent nodevalue
, we go to theleft subtree
, recursively (if, and only if, thecurrent node
has aleft child
). If thevalue
is greater, go to theright subtree
, recursively. - Line 10: We start to think about the
remove
algorithm. - From line 11 to line 13: We cover the
node
with nochildren
, and it is theleft child
from itsparent
. We remove thenode
by setting theparent
’sleft child
toNone
. - Lines 14 and 15: We cover the
node
with nochildren
, and it is theright child
from it’sparent
. We remove thenode
by setting theparent
’sright child
toNone
. - Clear node method: I will show the
clear_node
code below. It sets the nodesleft child , right child
, and itsvalue
toNone
. - From line 16 to line 18: We cover the
node
with just onechild
(left child
), and it is theleft child
from it’sparent
. We set theparent
'sleft child
to thenode
’sleft child
(the only child it has). - From line 19 to line 21: We cover the
node
with just onechild
(left child
), and it is theright child
from itsparent
. We set theparent
'sright child
to thenode
’sleft child
(the only child it has). - From line 22 to line 24: We cover the
node
with just onechild
(right child
), and it is theleft child
from itsparent
. We set theparent
'sleft child
to thenode
’sright child
(the only child it has). - From line 25 to line 27: We cover the
node
with just onechild
(right child
) , and it is theright child
from itsparent
. We set theparent
'sright child
to thenode
’sright child
(the only child it has). - From line 28 to line 30: We cover the
node
with bothleft
andright
children. We get thenode
with the smallestvalue
(the code is shown below) and set it to thevalue
of thecurrent node
. Finish it by removing the smallestnode
. - Line 32: If we find the
node
we are looking for, it needs to returnTrue
. From line 11 to line 31, we handle this case. So just returnTrue
and that’s it.
- To use the
clear_node
method: set theNone
value to all three attributes — (value
,left_child
, andright_child
)
def clear_node(self): self.value = None self.left_child = None self.right_child = None
- To use the
find_minimum_value
method: go way down to the left. If we can’t find anymore nodes, we found the smallest one.
def find_minimum_value(self): if self.left_child: return self.left_child.find_minimum_value() else: return self.value
Now let’s test it.
We will use this tree
to test our remove_node
algorithm.
# |15| # / \ # |10| |20| # / \ / \ # |8| |12| |17| |25| # \ # |19|
Let’s remove the node
with the value
8. It’s a node
with no child.
print(bst.remove_node(8, None)) # True bst.pre_order_traversal() # |15| # / \ # |10| |20| # \ / \ # |12| |17| |25| # \ # |19|
Now let’s remove the node
with the value
17. It’s a node
with just one child.
print(bst.remove_node(17, None)) # True bst.pre_order_traversal() # |15| # / \ # |10| |20| # \ / \ # |12| |19| |25|
Finally, we will remove a node
with two children. This is the root
of our tree
.
print(bst.remove_node(15, None)) # True bst.pre_order_traversal() # |19| # / \ # |10| |20| # \ \ # |12| |25|
The tests are now done. :)
That’s all for now!
We learned a lot here.
Congrats on finishing this dense content. It’s really tough to understand a concept that we do not know. But you did it. :)
This is one more step forward in my journey to learning and mastering algorithms and data structures. You can see the documentation of my complete journey here on my Renaissance Developer publication.
Have fun, keep learning and coding.
My Twitter & Github. ☺
Additional resources
- Introduction to Tree Data Structure by mycodeschool
- Tree by Wikipedia
- How To Not Be Stumped By Trees by the talented Vaidehi Joshi
- Intro to Trees, Lecture by Professor Jonathan Cohen
- Intro to Trees, Lecture by Professor David Schmidt
- Intro to Trees, Lecture by Professor Victor Adamchik
- Trees with Gayle Laakmann McDowell
- Binary Tree Implementation and Tests by TK
- Coursera Course: Data Structures by University of California, San Diego
- Coursera Course: Data Structures and Performance by University of California, San Diego
- Binary Search Tree concepts and Implementation by Paul Programming
- Binær søgetræsimplementering og test af TK
- Tree Traversal af Wikipedia
- Binært søgetræ Fjern knudealgoritme af GeeksforGeeks
- Binært søgetræ Fjern knudealgoritme af Algolist
- At lære Python fra nul til helt