Search function with multiple data type in C binary search tree

Question

I have a BST with id as a key as follows:

struct node
{
    int id;
    char name[100];
    struct node *right;
    struct node *left;
};

Here is the code to search an id:

struct node* search(struct node *root, int x)
{
    if(root==NULL || root->id==x)
        return root;
    else if(x>root->id)
        return search(root->right, x);
    else
        return search(root->left,x);
}

But what if I want to search for a name? Is it possible? Any suggestion? Thanks

Answer 1

As the binary tree is ordered based on the key int id then you need to traverse all nodes of the tree to find a node with the specified name using the string function strcmp.

For example

#include <string.h>

//...

struct node* search(struct node *root, const char *name )
{
    if(root==NULL || strcmp( root->name, name ) == 0 )
    {
        return root;
    }
    else 
    {
        struct node *target = search(root->left, name);
        return target != NULL ? target : search(root->right, name);
    }
}