Your function will only compare as equal 2 trees that have exactly the same structure. If the trees are balanced differently, the comparison will return 0 even if the values are identical.
Performing this comparison is non trivial as the trees can have an arbitrary depth if they are not balanced.
You can walk the first tree in depth first order to populate an array and then walk the second tree in depth first order, checking that the values are identical to those in the array.
Here is a simple implementation:
#include <stdlib.h>
struct Node {
int data;
struct Node* left;
struct Node* right;
};
size_t tree_length(const struct Node *root) {
return root ? 1 + tree_length(root->left) + tree_length(root->right) : 0;
}
void tree_store(int *array, size_t *pos, struct Node *node) {
if (node) {
tree_store(array, pos, node->left);
array[++*pos - 1] = node->data;
tree_store(array, pos, node->right);
}
}
int tree_check(int *array, size_t *pos, struct Node *node) {
if (node) {
return tree_check(array, pos, node->left)
&& array[++*pos - 1] == node->data
&& tree_check(array, pos, node->right);
} else {
return 1;
}
}
/* compare trees: return 0 if different, 1 if same values, -1 if allocation error */
int isIdentical(const struct Node *root1, const struct Node *root2) {
size_t len1 = tree_length(root1);
size_t len2 = tree_length(root2);
size_t pos;
if (len1 != len2)
return 0;
if (len1 == 0)
return 1;
int *array = malloc(sizeof(*array) * len1);
if (!array)
return -1;
pos = 0;
tree_store(array, &pos, root1);
pos = 0;
int res = tree_check(array, &pos, root2);
free(array);
return res;
}
If you are not allowed to convert the trees to arrays, you could:
- normalize both trees, then use your simple comparator, but this will modify the trees and is difficult.
- implement a stack based iterator and iterate both trees in parallel.
Here is a simple implementation of the latter:
#include <stddef.h>
struct Node {
int data;
struct Node *left;
struct Node *right;
};
size_t max_size(size_t a, size_t b) {
return a < b ? b : a;
}
size_t tree_depth(const struct Node *root) {
return root ? 1 + max_size(tree_depth(root->left), tree_depth(root->right)) : 0;
}
int tree_next(const struct Node **stack, size_t *ppos, int *value) {
size_t pos = *ppos;
if (stack[pos] == NULL) {
if (pos == 0)
return 0; // no more values
pos--;
} else {
while (stack[pos]->left) {
stack[pos + 1] = stack[pos]->left;
pos++;
}
}
*value = stack[pos]->data;
stack[pos] = stack[pos]->right;
*ppos = pos;
return 1;
}
/* compare trees: return 0 if different, 1 if same values, -1 if allocation error */
int isIdentical(const struct Node *root1, const struct Node *root2) {
if (root1 == NULL || root2 == NULL)
return root1 == root2;
size_t depth1 = tree_depth(root1);
size_t depth2 = tree_depth(root2);
const struct Node *stack1[depth1];
const struct Node *stack2[depth2];
size_t pos1 = 0;
size_t pos2 = 0;
stack1[pos1++] = root1;
stack2[pos2++] = root2;
for (;;) {
int value1, value2;
int has1 = tree_next(stack1, &pos1, &value1);
int has2 = tree_next(stack2, &pos2, &value2);
if (!has1 && !has2)
return 1;
if (!has1 || !has2 || value1 != value2)
return 0;
}
}