Introduction to Binary Search Trees
Explore the basic concepts of binary search trees (BSTs) to understand their structure where each node has at most two children with an ordering rule that enables efficient searching, insertion, and deletion. Learn how BSTs differ from general binary trees, how inorder traversal retrieves sorted data, and why balancing the tree is essential for maintaining performance.
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A binary tree is a data structure where each node has at most two children: a left child and a right child.
A binary search tree (BST) is a special type of binary tree that maintains an ordering rule:
All values in the left subtree are smaller than the node.
All values in the right subtree are greater than or equal to the node.
This rule applies recursively to every node.
For example, if the root is