Binary Tree Search

We can efficiently search for a desired element of the tree by taking advantage of the ordering and using divide-and-conquer.

public static Tree search
                   (Tree start, String goal) {
    if ( start == null )
        return null;       // goal not found
    else
     { int test = goal.compareTo(start.contents);
       if ( test == 0 )
          return start;    // found
         else if ( test < 0 )
                 return search(start.left, goal);
            else return search(start.right, goal);
     } }

If the tree is balanced, search takes only O(log(n)) time.

We return the node because it is likely that the application will need to do something with it. For example, we might search on a customer name and use the customer's account information.