Traversing a n-ary tree without using recurrsion

Question

How can I traverse an n-ary tree without using recursion?

Recursive way:

traverse(Node node)
{
    if(node == null)
        return;

            


        

Answer 1

No language given, so in pseudo-pseudocode:

traverse(Node node)
{
  List nodes = [node];

  while (nodes.notEmpty) {
    Node n = nodes.shift();

    for (Node child in n.getChildren()) {
      nodes.add(child);
    }

    // do stuff with n, maybe
  }
}

Note that this is a breadth-first traversal as opposed to the depth-first traversal given in the question. You should be able to do a depth-first traversal by poping the last item off the nodes list instead of shifting the first one.