Trees

Trees and
Graphs:
 A Tree is a non-linear data structure used to show the hierarchical relationship
among data.
Example for a Tree:
The OS of a computer system organizes files into
folders, subfolders and files. This can be viewed as the
tree.

A tree is a graph called the directed acyclic graph.

A graph G is a set V, a set E, and a mapping from the set E to set V.

Here, V is the set of nodes, also called as vertices points, of the graph, and E is the set of
edges of the graph. We can represent them as G = (V, E).

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Tree Terminology:
Forest and Trees 
In graph theory a forest is an acyclic graph, and a tree is a connected acyclic graph; thus
a forest may consist of a set of trees.

Directed tree: An acyclic directed graph is a directed tree.

Root: A directed tree has one node called its root, with in degree zero.
Terminal node (leaf node): In a directed tree, any node that has an out degree zero is a
terminal node. The terminal node is also called as leaf node (or external node).
Branch node (internal node): All other nodes whose out degree is not zero are called as
branch nodes.
Level of node: The level of any node is its path length from the root.
Empty tree: A set of zero items is a tree, called the empty tree (or null tree).
Sub trees: If T1, T2... Tn are n trees for n > 0 and R is a node of tree then T1, T2, ..., Tn are called
sub trees.
Degree of a node: The degree of a node is the number of sub trees it has.
Parent: Root of a tree (or sub tree) the parent.
Children: The roots of
the sub trees are the
children.
Siblings: The children
of the same node are
called siblings.

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Edges: edges connect a root with the roots of each sub tree.
Directed edge: The relationship between a parent and its children is a directed edge.
Undirected edge: An undirected edge extends in both directions (a parent and a child).
Directed path: A directed path is a sequence of directed edges e1, e2, ..., en.
Undirected path: An undirected path is a similar sequence of undirected edges.
Length of a path: The length of a path is the number of edges it contains.
Depth or level: The depth or level of a node is the length of a directed path from the
root to that node.
Height of a tree: The height of a tree is the length of the path from the root to a node at
the lowest level.

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