What is the primary purpose of a queue in the context of binary tree traversal?
Practice Questions
Q1
What is the primary purpose of a queue in the context of binary tree traversal?
To store nodes for post-order traversal
To store nodes for in-order traversal
To store nodes for level-order traversal
To store nodes for pre-order traversal
Questions & Step-by-Step Solutions
What is the primary purpose of a queue in the context of binary tree traversal?
Step 1: Understand what a binary tree is. A binary tree is a structure where each node has at most two children, called the left child and the right child.
Step 2: Learn about tree traversal. Tree traversal means visiting all the nodes in the tree in a specific order.
Step 3: Know the different types of tree traversal. There are several types, including in-order, pre-order, post-order, and level-order.
Step 4: Focus on level-order traversal. In level-order traversal, we visit all nodes at the present depth level before moving on to nodes at the next depth level.
Step 5: Understand the role of a queue in level-order traversal. A queue is a data structure that follows the First In, First Out (FIFO) principle, which means the first element added is the first one to be removed.
Step 6: See how the queue is used. When performing level-order traversal, we add the root node to the queue, then repeatedly remove nodes from the front of the queue, process them, and add their children to the back of the queue.
Step 7: Conclude that the primary purpose of the queue is to keep track of the nodes to be processed in the correct order during level-order traversal.