balanced tree
ANY NODE-BASED BINARY SEARCH TREE THAT AUTOMATICALLY KEEPS ITS HEIGHT SMALL
Balanced tree; Balanced binary search tree; Height-balanced binary search tree; Height-balanced tree; Self-balancing binary tree; Balanced binary tree; Height-balanced binary tree; SBB tree; Balanced trees; Admissible tree; Relaxed balance; Root balance; Binary self-balancing search tree
<
algorithm> An optimisation of a
tree which aims to keep
equal numbers of items on each
subtree of each node so as to
minimise the maximum path from the root to any
leaf node.
As items are inserted and deleted, the tree is restructured to
keep the nodes balanced and the search paths uniform. Such an
algorithm is appropriate where the overheads of the
reorganisation on update are outweighed by the benefits of
faster search.
A
B-tree is a kind of
balanced tree that can have more
than two subtrees at each node (i.e. one that is not
restricted to being a
binary tree).
(2000-01-10)