Really confused about AVL Tree

Per wiki: In an AVL Tree, the heights of the two child subtrees of any node differ by at most one;

I am not getting this at all, I was going to post it yesterday before I went to sleep, but I figured I would wait & try to figure it out. I am totally stumped on this.

My AVL Tree code builds a tree that looks like this:

HERE

Would it be breaking the definition since (struct 8->right) height is 0, and (23->right->right) height is 2? (difference of 2). Or do we not count (struct 8->right) height, since it does not exist?

I used the code my professor provided, but I was thinking that 16 should be root of 8 & 42, 8 should be the root of 15 & 4, and 42 would be the root of 16 & 72.

I compared the code with other AVL Tree code (in C++), and everything matched up for the most part (the max of 2 numbers was different, but that's short code).

If anyone wants to know what the code looks like (note, I didn't include main because it's totally irrelevant, along with the readFile function, I get the correct pointer returned):

Code:

int Height(Position P)
{
	if(P == NULL)
		return -1;
	else
		return P->Height;
}



AVLTree Insert(ElementType X, AVLTree T)
{
	if(T == NULL)
	{
		T = malloc(sizeof(struct AVLNode));
		if(T==NULL)
		{
			printf("Fatal Error...Exiting!\n");
			exit(1);
		}
		else
		{
			T->Element = X;
			T->Height = 0;
			T->Left = NULL;
			T->Right = NULL;
		}


	}
	else if(X < T->Element)
	{
		T->Left = Insert(X, T->Left);
		if(Height(T->Left) - Height(T->Right) == 2)
		{
			if(X < T->Left->Element)
				T = SingleRotateWithLeft(T);
			else
				T = DoubleRotateWithLeft(T);
		}
	}
	else if(X > T->Element)
	{
		T->Right = Insert(X, T->Right);
		if(Height(T->Right) - Height(T->Left) == 2)
		{
			if(X > T->Right->Element)
				T = SingleRotateWithRight(T);
			else
				T = DoubleRotateWithRight(T);
		}
	}

	T->Height = (Max(Height(T->Left), Height(T->Right)) + 1);
	return T;
}

Position SingleRotateWithLeft(Position K2)
{

	Position K1;
	K1 = K2->Left;
	K2->Left = K1->Right;
	K1->Right = K2;

	K2->Height = (Max(Height(K2->Left), Height(K2->Right)) + 1);
	K1->Height = (Max(Height(K1->Left), (K2->Height)) + 1);

	return K1;
}

Position SingleRotateWithRight(Position K1)
{
	Position K2;
	K2 = K1->Right;
	K1->Right = K2->Left;
	K2->Left = K1;

	K1->Height = (Max(Height(K1->Left), Height(K1->Right)) + 1);
	K2->Height = (Max(Height(K2->Right), (K1->Height)) + 1);

	return K2;
}


Position DoubleRotateWithLeft(Position K3)
{
 	K3->Left = SingleRotateWithRight(K3->Left);

	return SingleRotateWithLeft(K3);
}

Position DoubleRotateWithRight(Position K1)
{
 	K1->Right = SingleRotateWithLeft(K1->Right);

	return SingleRotateWithRight(K1);
}

int Max(int x, int y)
{
	if(x < y)
		return y;
	return x;
}

Originally Posted by madmax2006

Would it be breaking the definition since (struct 8->right) height is 0, and (23->right->right) height is 2? (difference of 2). Or do we not count (struct 8->right) height, since it does not exist?

Code:

      15
    /    \
  8        23
 /        /  \
4        16   42
               \
                72

The height of the node with 8 is one because there is one level of node(s) below it. The height of the node with 23 is two because there are two levels of node(s) below it. The image is of a valid AVL tree.
Heights:
(4) -> 0
(16) -> 0
(72) -> 0
(8) -> 1
(42) -> 1
(23) -> 2
(15) -> 3

AVL trees don't guarantee absolutely optimal balancing. It would be too inefficient (take more work that it's worth) to rotate the tree into:

Code:

      16
    /    \
  8        42
 / \      /  \
4   15   23   72

Only the search for one of the items out of seven gets a path one-node shorter, the other six remain the same.