Data Structures | Tree Traversals | Question 10

Consider the following C program segment

struct CellNode
{
  struct CelINode *leftchild;
  int element;
  struct CelINode *rightChild;
}

int Dosomething(struct CelINode *ptr)
{
    int value = 0;
    if (ptr != NULL)
    {
      if (ptr->leftChild != NULL)
        value = 1 + DoSomething(ptr->leftChild);
      if (ptr->rightChild != NULL)
        value = max(value, 1 + DoSomething(ptr->rightChild));
    }
    return (value);
}

The value returned by the function DoSomething when a pointer to the root of a non-empty tree is passed as argument is (GATE CS 2004)
(A) The number of leaf nodes in the tree
(B) The number of nodes in the tree
(C) The number of internal nodes in the tree
(D) The height of the tree

Answer: (D)
Explanation: Explanation: DoSomething() returns max(height of left child + 1, height of right child + 1). So given that pointer to root of tree is passed to DoSomething(), it will return height of the tree. Note that this implementation follows the convention where height of a single node is 0.
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