How to print a level of a binary search tree? - c++

Question

If we have say, a tree with a depth of 2:
6 <- depth = 0
/ \
/ \
4 9 <- depth = 1
/ \ \
3 5 10 <- depth = 2
And I only want to print the second level, so 3, 5, and 10 (in that order), how would I go about doing this? I'm using the code I wrote for my inorder traversal but I'm stuck on how to track depth of the tree and print when I'm at said depth.
void printLevelNodesHelper(MovieNode * curr, int level){ //helper function
int lvl = level; //store initial value of level
if(curr != NULL){
printLevelNodesHelper(curr->left, level+1);
if(level == lvl){
cout << "Movie: " << curr->title << " " << curr->rating << endl;
}
printLevelNodesHelper(curr->right, level+1);
}
}
void MovieTree::printLevelNodes(int k){ //k is the desired level
MovieNode * curr = root;
if(root == NULL){ //if the tree is empty exit it
return;
}
else if(k == 0){ //print the root's title
cout << "Movie: " << curr->title << " " << curr->rating << endl;
}
else{
printLevelNodesHelper(curr, k);
}
}
Here's the info for my struct and class
struct MovieNode{
int ranking;
string title;
int year;
float rating;
MovieNode* left = NULL;
MovieNode* right = NULL;
};
class MovieTree{
private:
MovieNode* root;
public:
MovieTree();
~MovieTree();
void printMovieInventory();
void addMovieNode(int ranking, std::string title, int year, float rating);
void findMovie(std::string title);
void queryMovies(float rating, int year);
void averageRating();
void printLevelNodes(int k);
};

Answer 1

Some issues:
As your initial call to printLevelNodesHelper gets the desired level as argument, it makes no sense to make recursive calls with level+1. Think about it: when you recur, you actually descend in the tree, coming closer to the desired level, so you should not increase the distance to that level, but decrease it. So you should pass level-1
In printLevelNodesHelper the if condition level == lvl is always going to be true, because neither of these local variables ever change value. As from the previous point we guarantee that eventually we will get a call with level equal to 0, we should check for level == 0 (and so you don't need the lvl variable).
Code:
void printLevelNodesHelper(MovieNode * curr, int level) {
if (curr != NULL) {
printLevelNodesHelper(curr->left, level - 1);
if (level == 0) {
cout << "Movie: " << curr->title << " " << curr->rating << endl;
}
printLevelNodesHelper(curr->right, level - 1);
}
}
With this change, the code for MovieTree::printLevelNodes does not need to deal with the boundary cases of root == NULL or k == 0. Both of these are well managed in the above helper function. On the other hand, you might want to add some protection against the infinite recursion that would occur if printLevelNodes is called with a negative value of k:
void MovieTree::printLevelNodes(int k) {
if (k >= 0) printLevelNodesHelper(root, k);
}