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Solution: Recover a Tree From Preorder Traversal

Explore how to reconstruct an original binary tree from a preorder traversal string that encodes node depths with dashes. Learn to implement a DFS algorithm that parses the string, builds nodes recursively at the correct depths, and handles tree construction efficiently in a single pass.

Statement

We perform a preorder depth-first traversal on a binary tree starting from its root.

  • For each node, we first write D dashes, where D is the depth of the node in the tree, followed by the node’s integer value.

  • The root node has depth 0.

  • If a node is at depth D, its children (if any) will appear at depth D + 1.

  • If a node has only one child, it will always be the left child.

You are given the string representation of this traversal. Your task is to reconstruct the original binary tree and return its root.

Constraints:

  • The number of nodes in the original binary tree lies within the range ...