Tree search function

Question

Any node can have any number of children. To search this tree i wrote something like this

function Search(key, nodes){

 for (var i = 0; i < nodes.length; i++) {


        if (nodes[i].key == key) {
            return nodes[i];
        }



        if (nodes[i].hasOwnProperty('children')) {
            return this.Search(key, nodes[i].children);
        }


    }

which doesn't quite work...any input?

Answer 1

You only recursively search the first node that has children.

You should rewrite that last conditional to something like this:

if (nodes[i].hasOwnProperty('children')) {
    var node = this.Search(key, nodes[i].children);
    if(node != null)
        return node;
}

You also need to add a case for if the node is not found - for example, a return null at the very bottom of the function.