Consider the operation of deleting the root of a binary search tree.If the root is a leaf,then
A) the method doing the deletion should throw an exception
B) the root should be replaced with a dummy place-holder node
C) the reference to the root of the tree should be set to null
D) the element stored in the root node should be replaced with null,or with 0.

Question

Quizplus · Accepted Answer

If the root of a binary search tree is a leaf (i.e., it has no children), then deleting the root simply involves setting the reference to the root to null. This effectively removes the root node and the entire tree from memory. Option A (throwing an exception) is not an appropriate action as this is a valid scenario that can occur during normal operations. Option B (replacing the root with a dummy node) would not preserve the properties of a binary search tree as the dummy node may not satisfy the ordering property. Option D (replacing the element stored in the root node with null or 0) would only affect the element value and not the structure of the tree. Therefore, option C is the best choice.

Consider the Operation of Deleting the Root of a Binary