Authors:
Stuart Reges, Marty Stepp
Chapter:
Binary Trees
Exercise:
Exercises
Question:13 | ISBN:9780136091813 | Edition: 2
Question
Write a method called removeLeaves that removes the leaves from a tree. A leaf is a node that has empty left and right subtrees. If your method is called on an empty tree, the method does not change the tree because there are no nodes of any kind (leaf or not).
Add the above method to the IntTree class from this chapter. You may define additional private methods to implement your public method if necessary. Several problem descriptions refer to the following reference binary trees:
Answer
Implementation of removeLeaves method:
public void removeLeaves()
{
removeLeaves(overallRoot);
}
private void removeLeaves(IntTreeNode root)
{
if(root == null)
{
return;
}
else
{
if(root.left != null)
{
if(root.left.left == null
&& root.left.right == null)
{
root.left = null;
}
else
{
removeLeaves(root.left);
}
}
if(root.right != null)
{
if(root.right.left == null
&& root.right.right == null)
{
root.right = null;
}
else
{
removeLeaves(root.right);
}
}
}
}