Calculate height of a tree

Question

I am trying to calculate the height of a tree. I am doing it with the code written below.

#include<iostream.h>

struct tree
{
    int data;
    struct tree * left;
    struct tree * right;
};

typedef struct tree tree;

class Tree
{
private:
    int n;
    int data;
    int l,r;
public:
    tree * Root;
    Tree(int x)
    {
        n=x;
        l=0;
        r=0;
        Root=NULL;
    }
    void create();
    int height(tree * Height);

};

void Tree::create()
{
    //Creting the tree structure
} 

int Tree::height(tree * Height)
{
    if(Height->left==NULL && Height->right==NULL)
    {return 0;
    }
    else
    {
        l=height(Height->left);
        r=height(Height->right);

        if (l>r)
        {l=l+1;
        return l;
        }
        else
        {
            r=r+1;
            return r;
        }
    }
}

int main()
{
    Tree A(10);//Initializing 10 node Tree object
    A.create();//Creating a 10 node tree

    cout<<"The height of tree"<<A.height(A.Root);*/

}

It gives me the correct result.

But in some posts(googled page) it was suggested to do a Postorder traversal and use this height method to calculate the height. Any specific reason?

Answer 1

But isn't a postorder traversal precisely what you are doing? Assuming left and right are both non-null, you first do height(left), then height(right), and then some processing in the current node. That's postorder traversal according to me.

But I would write it like this:

int Tree::height(tree *node) {
    if (!node) return -1;

    return 1 + max(height(node->left), height(node->right));
}

Edit: depending on how you define tree height, the base case (for an empty tree) should be 0 or -1.