clumpsy tree insertion

[nimitzhunter]

This is my clumsy implementation of insertion into a binary tree class. It just uses nested "if" statement to walk through the node recursively.

class Tree
{
private:
   struct Node
  {
    int item;
    //  relate[0] = parent;
    //  relate[1] = left child;
    //  relate[2] = right child;
    Node * relate[3];
    Node(int n = 0):item(n)
    {
      relate[0]=relate[1] = relate[2] = 0;
    }
  };
  
  Node* root, *temp_insert;
public:
   void insert_tree(int x);
};

// insertion
void Tree::insert_tree(int x)
{
  if ( x < temp_insert->item)
    {
      if( temp_insert->relate[1] != NULL)
	{
	  temp_insert = temp_insert->relate[1];
	  insert_tree(x);
	}
      else
	{
	  Node * temp = new Node(x);
	  temp_insert->relate[1] = temp;
	  temp->relate[0] = temp_insert;
	  temp_insert = root; 
	}
	
    }
  else if( x > temp_insert->item )
    {
      if( temp_insert->relate[1] != NULL)
	{
	  temp_insert = temp_insert->relate[2];
	  insert_tree(x);
	}
      else
	{
	  Node * temp = new Node(x);
	  temp_insert->relate[2] = temp;
	  temp->relate[0] = temp_insert;
	  temp_insert = root;
	}
    }
  
}

Tree insertion seems to work better if it takes in as the argument the pointer to a node. But since the node is private, it makes recursion call a lot more awkward through the use of a member variable "temp_insert" to walk around the nodes. is there a way to avoid this problem?

[tabstop]

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

void Tree::insert_tree(int x) {
    insert_tree_for_real(root, x);
}

void Tree::insert_tree_for_real(Node *root_o_tree, int value) {
    //usual recursive function goes here
}

[nimitzhunter]

Is this the sort of thing you're looking for?

void Tree::insert_tree(int x) {
    insert_tree_for_real(root, x);
}

void Tree::insert_tree_for_real(Node *root_o_tree, int value) {
    //usual recursive function goes here
}

hi tabstop. a function wrapper? DUH, that's genius, why didn't i think of that.. *sigh*. thank you, I really appreciate your help.

[iMalc]

Most of us don't think of everything the first time.
It's been almost 20 years since I started programming and just today I saw something that made me wonder why I didn't think of a certain way of doing something yesterday.