Book Image

Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Python - Second Edition

By : Dr. Basant Agarwal, Benjamin Baka
Book Image

Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Python - Second Edition

By: Dr. Basant Agarwal, Benjamin Baka

Overview of this book

Data structures allow you to store and organize data efficiently. They are critical to any problem, provide a complete solution, and act like reusable code. Hands-On Data Structures and Algorithms with Python teaches you the essential Python data structures and the most common algorithms for building easy and maintainable applications. This book helps you to understand the power of linked lists, double linked lists, and circular linked lists. You will learn to create complex data structures, such as graphs, stacks, and queues. As you make your way through the chapters, you will explore the application of binary searches and binary search trees, along with learning common techniques and structures used in tasks such as preprocessing, modeling, and transforming data. In the concluding chapters, you will get to grips with organizing your code in a manageable, consistent, and extendable way. You will also study how to bubble sort, selection sort, insertion sort, and merge sort algorithms in detail. By the end of the book, you will have learned how to build components that are easy to understand, debug, and use in different applications. You will get insights into Python implementation of all the important and relevant algorithms.
Table of Contents (16 chapters)

Binary trees

A binary tree is one in which each node has a maximum of two children. The nodes in the binary tree are organized in the form of left sub-tree and right sub-tree. If the tree has a root, R, and two sub-trees, that is, left sub-tree T1, and right sub-tree T2, then their roots are called left successor and right successor, respectively.

The following diagram is an example of a binary tree with five nodes:

Here are the following observations that we have made regarding the preceding diagram:

  • Each node holds a reference to a right and left node if the nodes do not exist
  • The root node is denoted with 5
  • The root node has two sub-trees, where the left sub-tree has one node, that is, a node with a value of 3, and the right sub-tree has three nodes with the values 7, 6, and 9
  • The node with a value of 3 is a left successor node, whereas the node with a value of 7 is the...