Performing Breadth First Search recursively

Question

Let\'s say you wanted to implement a breadth-first search of a binary tree recursively. How would you go about it?

Is it possible using only the call-stack

Answer 1

BFS for a binary (or n-ary) tree can be done recursively without queues as follows (here in Java):

public class BreathFirst {

    static class Node {
        Node(int value) {
            this(value, 0);
        }
        Node(int value, int nChildren) {
            this.value = value;
            this.children = new Node[nChildren];
        }
        int value;
        Node[] children;
    }

    static void breathFirst(Node root, Consumer printer) {
        boolean keepGoing = true;
        for (int level = 0; keepGoing; level++) {
            keepGoing = breathFirst(root, printer, level);
        }
    }

    static boolean breathFirst(Node node, Consumer printer, int depth) {
        if (depth < 0 || node == null) return false;
        if (depth == 0) {
            printer.accept(node);
            return true;
        }
        boolean any = false;
        for (final Node child : node.children) {
            any |= breathFirst(child, printer, depth - 1);
        }
        return any;
    }
}

An example traversal printing numbers 1-12 in ascending order:

public static void main(String... args) {
    //            1
    //          / | \
    //        2   3   4
    //      / |       | \
    //    5   6       7  8
    //  / |           | \
    // 9  10         11  12

    Node root = new Node(1, 3);
    root.children[0] = new Node(2, 2);
    root.children[1] = new Node(3);
    root.children[2] = new Node(4, 2);
    root.children[0].children[0] = new Node(5, 2);
    root.children[0].children[1] = new Node(6);
    root.children[2].children[0] = new Node(7, 2);
    root.children[2].children[1] = new Node(8);
    root.children[0].children[0].children[0] = new Node(9);
    root.children[0].children[0].children[1] = new Node(10);
    root.children[2].children[0].children[0] = new Node(11);
    root.children[2].children[0].children[1] = new Node(12);

    breathFirst(root, n -> System.out.println(n.value));
}