How does this inorder traversal algorithm work?

Question

I don\'t have much experience with recursion, so I\'m having a hard time determining exactly how this algorithm works:

 public static void inorder(Node

        

Answer 1

The best way to understand recurssion is try to state your problem verbally and then work through an example (You can refer @Mark Carpenter 's example) :

The way inorder search works is as follows :

Say I am at node n :

1) First access all nodes to left of node n. (i.e n.getLeft()) in inorder fashion , the best way to achieve this is to call inorder() recursively and pass it the left child of n.

2) Now when the function reaches this step, it had already printed all left children of Node n. So now print Node n.

3) Now access all nodes to right of node x. (i.e n.getRight()) in inorder fashion, the best way to achieve this is to call inorder() recursively and pass it the right child of n.