"David L. Nicol" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> writes:
> I have just been hipped to the elegant method of storing binary
> trees in arrays, which I never knew before. Here is the kernel
> of it:
>
>
> The root of the tree is always at position 0
>
> The parent of any node $N is at position int($N >> 1)
>
> The children of any node are at ($N << 1) and (($N << 1) +1)
>
> ( aka $N*2 and $N*2+1 )
This only works for complete binary trees, of course. You cannot
e.g. represent this tree (without wasting an exponential amount of
space, that it):
/\
/\
/\
/\
/\
/\
/\
/\
So it's mostly used for very specific trees. There's a standard way
to build a heap which works this way.
> Are there any CPAN modules that use this technique to create
> hash-like containers in the form of trees of [$key,$value] objects?
The Heap module might be implemented like this (there are also other
ways to do it!). Since Heaps are used in priority queues, you could
look for a module implementing those.
--
Ariel Scolnicov |"GCAAGAATTGAACTGTAG" | [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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