How to determine if binary tree is balanced?

Question

It\'s been a while from those school years. Got a job as IT specialist at a hospital. Trying to move to do some actual programming now. I\'m working on binary trees now, a

Answer 1

/* Returns true if Tree is balanced, i.e. if the difference between the longest path and the shortest path from the root to a leaf node is no more than than 1. This difference can be changed to any arbitrary positive number. */
boolean isBalanced(Node root) {
    if (longestPath(root) - shortestPath(root) > 1)
        return false;
    else
        return true;
}


int longestPath(Node root) {
    if (root == null);
        return 0;
    else {
        int leftPathLength = longestPath(root.left);
        int rightPathLength = longestPath(root.right);
        if (leftPathLength >= rightPathLength)
            return leftPathLength + 1;
        else
            return rightPathLength + 1;
    }
}

int shortestPath(Node root) {
    if (root == null);
        return 0;
    else {
        int leftPathLength = shortestPath(root.left);
        int rightPathLength = shortestPath(root.right);
        if (leftPathLength <= rightPathLength)
            return leftPathLength + 1;
        else
            return rightPathLength + 1;
    }
}