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

Here is a JavaScript Implementation that fakes Breadth First Traversal with Depth First recursion. I'm storing the node values at each depth inside an array, inside of a hash. If a level already exists(we have a collision), so we just push to the array at that level. You could use an array instead of a JavaScript object as well since our levels are numeric and can serve as array indices. You can return nodes, values, convert to a Linked List, or whatever you want. I'm just returning values for the sake of simplicity.

BinarySearchTree.prototype.breadthFirstRec = function() {

    var levels = {};

    var traverse = function(current, depth) {
        if (!current) return null;
        if (!levels[depth]) levels[depth] = [current.value];
        else levels[depth].push(current.value);
        traverse(current.left, depth + 1);
        traverse(current.right, depth + 1);
    };

    traverse(this.root, 0);
    return levels;
};


var bst = new BinarySearchTree();
bst.add(20, 22, 8, 4, 12, 10, 14, 24);
console.log('Recursive Breadth First: ', bst.breadthFirstRec());
/*Recursive Breadth First:  
{ '0': [ 20 ],
  '1': [ 8, 22 ],
  '2': [ 4, 12, 24 ],
  '3': [ 10, 14 ] } */

Here is an example of actual Breadth First Traversal using an iterative approach.

BinarySearchTree.prototype.breadthFirst = function() {

    var result = '',
        queue = [],
        current = this.root;

    if (!current) return null;
    queue.push(current);

    while (current = queue.shift()) {
        result += current.value + ' ';
        current.left && queue.push(current.left);
        current.right && queue.push(current.right);
    }
    return result;
};

console.log('Breadth First: ', bst.breadthFirst());
//Breadth First:  20 8 22 4 12 24 10 14