Why doesn't this work recursively?

Question

Below is a program in Scala.

def range(low : Int, high : Int) : List[Int] = {
    var result : List[Int] = Nil
    result = rangerec(root, result, low, high)
    result
}

private def rangerec(r : Node, l : List[Int], low : Int, high :Int) : List[Int] = {
      var resultList : List[Int] = List()
      if(r.left != null) {
        rangerec(r.left, resultList, low, high)
      } else if(r.right != null) {
        rangerec(r.right, resultList, low, high)
      } else {
        if(r.key >= low && r.key <= high) {
            resultList = resultList ::: List(r.key)
            resultList
        } 
      }
      resultList
}

I made range method in my binary search tree, implementing in-order traversal algorithm. So it has to work recursively, but it doesn't print anything, List(). How to fix my algorithm? or edit my code?

Answer 1

I don't know scala, but you need to use list l passed as a parameter into recursive function and use output from rangerec function.

private def rangerec(r : Node, l : List[Int], low : Int, high :Int) : List[Int] = {
      var resultList : List[Int] = l
      if(r.left != null) {
        resultList = rangerec(r.left, l, low, high)
      } else if(r.right != null) {
        resultList = rangerec(r.right, l, low, high)
      } else {
        if(r.key >= low && r.key <= high) {
            resultList = l ::: List(r.key)
        } 
      }
      resultList
}

Answer 2

Define your resultList outside the function as I see you appending result to this variable. By the way, in order traversal follows this rule. Visit Left, Visit Root and finally Visit Right. However from the code (although I don't know scala), I can decipher that you are visiting left, right and finally root.

A equivalent recursive in-order printing javacode would have looked like this

 public void printOrdered(Node node){
  if(node.left != null){
   printOrdered(node.left); //VISIT LEFT
  }
  System.out.println(node.data); //VISIT ROOT AND PRINT
  if(node.right!=null){
   printOrdered(node.right); //VISIT RIGHT
  }
 }

So, the scala may look like this (syntax may be wrong)

private def rangerec(r : Node) : Void = {
      if(r.left != null) {
        rangerec(r.left)
      } 
      resultList = resultList :: List(r.key)
      if(r.right != null) {
        rangerec(r.right)
      }
}

Here resultList is a variable of type List which should be passed from outside.