[ No programming section, so I shall put this here ]

How would you go about coding the removal of an element from a binary tree ?

If the element is the last of it's branch, you just set the parent's pointer to null.Example

If the element branches out only on one side, you change his parent's pointer to put on it's children. Example

But what if the element to be taken out has 2 children ? Example

I know many won't understand what the heck I'm talking about, so just ignore this post

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hehe this sounds like a good question. I'm kinda surprised no one's answered it yet... the concepts of removing elements in a binary tree were taught to me in my advanced algorithms class about a year ago so it's kinda hazy hehe. Language shouldn't be a problem, as long as you implement the algorithm correctly. If you want to remove a specific element, I suppose you can traverse the binary tree "in-order" recursively until you find your element and then remove it. I believe there is a transformation that you must do to the tree so that it preserves it's properties, or is that with heaps... I dunno I'm a programmer so this question kinda caught my eye. I could have probably answered this without a problem last year hehe, now I'll have to dig into my books... if I can find em hehehe

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Hi,

Here's what you'll need to do:

Remove the element by pointing its parent node to the child node on the right. Traverse the binary subtree from the righthand child node till you get to the end on the left (the lowest value in the subtree), and attach the left child node of the element to be removed to the left of this last node in the subtree. Even if the lefthand child node has a subtree below it, you still maintain the binariness of the tree.

Cheers,
Sunil Bhadekar