Inorder traversal

Programs that utilize tree strucutres need to process nodes[?] in a tree (represented as circles in below diagram). Nodes contain information about an object. For now, let's assume each node contains a letter. The arrows indicate a link between nodes.

InOrder Traversal is a type of tree traversal[?] algorithm. Inorder refers to when the root is processed inbetween to its two subtrees.

Steps to Inorder Traversal

Given a non-empty tree,

1. Process the nodes in the left subtree with a recursive call
2. Process the root
3. Process the nodes in the right subtree with a recursive call

Given a binary tree PY:

The order would go D,B,G,E,A,C,F

Here is an example of InOrder in C++

 template <class Item>
 int inorder_print(const binary_tree_nodes<Item>* ptr)
 // ptr is a pointer to a node in a binary tree OR null
 // meaning empty tree.
 {
    if (ptr != NULL)
    {
        inorder_print( ptr->left() );
        std::cout << ptr->data() << std::endl;
        inorder_print( ptr->right() );
    }
    return 0;
 }

The same example in Haskell might look like

 data Tree a = ET | Node(a, Tree a, Tree a)

 inorder :: Tree a -> [a]
 inorder ET = []
 inorder (Node (x, left,right)) = (inorder left) ++ [x] ++ (inorder right)

Compare: Pre-order traversal, post-order traversal