building trees in Ruby

[Tony]

how would I go about putting one together and then traversing it?

[wtd]

code:

class BTreeNode    attr_reader :value    attr_accessor :left, :right    def initialize(value, left = nil, right = nil)       @value = value       @left, @right = left, right    end    def to_a       ...    end    def each       ...    end end

[Tony]

I don't quite get it. How would a pointer look like, and how would I use it?

Other than an array that is

[wtd]

No pointers.

But you can have an instance variable be either nil or another BTreeNode.

[Tony]

I suppose I could always just inline C

[wtd]

Ok... let's look at traversing a Ruby binary tree.

code:

def values    output = [@value]    output.push(*@left.values) unless @left.nil?    output.push(*@right.values) unless @right.nil?    output end

[Cervantes]

Though I haven't finished reading it, perhaps wtd's tutorial on linked lists and binary trees in Haskell, Java, and Ruby will help.

[wtd]

The very short answer...

"nil" is your Ruby equivalent to a NULL pointer.

[Tony]

ah, excellent I'll be trying out the examples.