when you find a node in preorder, to find its successor is just travesing to its next node.
what I was thinking first is the relationship of a node and its successor's values in pre-oder, but I found that it seems not very clear like the relationship in in-order. I think there is only one step beteen a node and its successor(if exists) : just move on travesing. So I design this algorithm.
my algorithm below is based on preorder travesal, it can run on a binary tree,not only BST.
#define NOT_FOUND -1
#define NEXT 0
#define FOUND 1
struct node {
struct node *p;//parent,but useless here
struct node *l;//left child
struct node *r;//right child
int value;
};
int travese(struct node* bnode, int* flag,int value)
{
if(bnode == NULL)
return 0;
else
{
if(*flag == FOUND)
//when the successor is found,do pruning.
return 1;
else if(*flag == NEXT) {
printf("successor:%d\n",bnode->value);
*flag = FOUND;
return 1;
}
else if(*flag == NOT_FOUND && bnode->value == value)
*flag = NEXT;
travese(bnode->l,flag,value);
travese(bnode->r,flag,value);
}
return 0;
}
and use it by:
int flag = NOT_FOUND;
travese(root,&flag,value);
if(flag == NEXT || flag == NOT_FOUND)
printf("no successor.\n");
EDIT:
turning a recurrence algorithm to a iterative one is not difficult by using a stack like below:
int preorder_travese_with_stack(struct node* bnode, int* flag,int value)
{
if(bnode == NULL)
return 0;
struct stack s;//some kind of implement
push(s,bnode);
while(NotEmpty(s) && *flag) {
struct node *curNode = pop(s);
if(*flag == NEXT) {
printf("successor:%d\n",curNode->value);
*flag = FOUND;
return 1;
}
else if(*flag == NOT_FOUND && curNode->value == value)
*flag = NEXT;
push(s,curNode->r);
push(s,curNode->l);
}
return 0;
}
but according to your comment and original description, I think the one you want is iterative algorithm without a stack.here it is.
After thinking ,searching and trying, I wrote one. When travse the tree iteratively without stack , the parent of a node is not useless any more. In a path, some nodes is visited not only once, and you need to record its direction at that time.
int preorder_travese_without_stack(struct node *root,int value,int *flag)
{
int state=1;
//state: traveral direction on a node
//1 for going down
//2 for going up from its left chlid
//3 for going up from its right child
struct node *cur = root;
while(1) {
if(state == 1) //first visit
{
//common travese:
//printf("%d ",cur->value);
if(cur->value == value && *flag == NOT_FOUND)
*flag = NEXT;
else if (*flag==NEXT) {
*flag = FOUND;
printf("successor:%d\n",cur->value);
break;
}
}
if((state == 1)&&(cur->l!=NULL))
cur = cur->l;
else if((state==1)&&(cur->l==NULL))
{
state = 2;
continue;
}
else if(state==2) {
if(cur->r != NULL ) {
cur=cur->r;
state = 1;
}
else
{
if(cur->p!=NULL)
{
if(cur==cur->p->r)
state = 3;
//else state keeps 2
cur=cur->p;
}
else //cur->p==NULL
{
if(cur->p->r!=NULL)
{
cur=cur->p->r;
state = 1;
}
else
break;
//end up in lchild of root
//because root's rchild is NULL
}
}
continue;
}
else //state ==3
{
if(cur->p!=NULL)
{
if(cur==cur->p->l)
state = 2;
else
state = 3;
cur=cur->p;
continue;
}
else
break;
}
}
}
the usage is the same as the first recurrence one.
If you are confused yet,mostly about the direction of a node , you can draw a tree and draw the path of pre-order traverse on paper,it would help.
I'm not sure there are bugs left in the code,but it works well on the tree below:
0
/ \
1 2
/ \ / \
3 4 5 6
btw,"wirte down pre-order (or else) travese algorithm of a tree both by recurrence and iteration" is a common interview problem, although solving the latter by a stack is permitted.but I think the BST requirement is unnecessary in pre-order travese.