On Fri, Jan 08, 1999 at 05:07:08PM +0530, Karthik Vishwanath wrote:
> HI all,
> I need to generate a tree structure in my Java app. The size of
> the tree cannot determined until runtime. THe idea i have is to store the
> tree as an array using the Vector class. Before i start implementation, i
> want to ask if there is an alternative approach to this?
That solution would work fine, of course. The alternative is a
`linked tree' structure. Binary trees are easy (just store each
node's left and right children, and probably the parent). Trees
with arbitrary numbers of branches are a little more complex. My
preferred solution is for each node to store parent, first child,
and `sibling', so to enumerate a node's children, you find the
first child then follow it's sibling list.
Unfortunately there isn't a standard tree class in the API, but you could
implement a class for a tree of arbitrary objects and use that if you
wanted.
Thomas
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