On 25/06/2019 13:24, mhysnm1...@gmail.com wrote: ... the tree I am trying to create is: > > * A single root node > * A node can only have a single parent. > * A parent can have multiple children. > * Each node is unique.
A tree with multiple children (where multiple is more than 2) is entirely possible but does make the code more complex. Have you considered a binary tree where items go either left or right depending on whether they are "greater than" or "less than" (for some arbitrary definition of greater and less) than the parent node? This is much simpler to code, and you will find lots of examples online. ------ monospace font needed ------- <pre> Root the brown fox cow car yellow car green house quick brown fox yellow flowers </pre> ------ end of monospace font ------- The immediate questions you must answer (because only you understand the requirements) are: 1) How do you know which tree branch to navigate down? For example you have two car nodes. If searching for car which is the correct answer? Similarly for fox? 2) How do you know to go down an extra level. For example there are 4 nodes below 'the' What determines whether a new node sits alongside the existing nodes or at a level below. 3) Having decided you need to go a level lower how do you know which subnode to go down? How do you insert the node car into the correct subnode of the?(either brown or yellow) It looks like you are doing this based on the textual context. That means you insertion code has to be stateful since it must remember the previous word inserted (or have access to the original data). That gets complicated really quickly. Similarly, when you try to retrieve the data how do yu know which node to fetch. For example if I search for fox? Surely you will need to provide the full 'path' to fox topick the right one? But if you know the path why search a tree? In that case nested dictionaries would seem a better solution? Something like(missing all the quotes!): data = { the: [ {brown: [ {fox:[]}, {cow:[]}, {car:[]}, ]}, {yellow: [ {car: []} ]}, {green: [ {house: []} ]}, {quick: [ {brown: [ {fox: []} ]}, ]}, ]}, {yellow: [ {flowers: []} ]} ]} Then you can access the appropriate path: myFox = data[the][quick][brown][fox] Just a thought. Since I don't really know how you intend to use this I'm not sure if that would work for you. -- Alan G Author of the Learn to Program web site http://www.alan-g.me.uk/ http://www.amazon.com/author/alan_gauld Follow my photo-blog on Flickr at: http://www.flickr.com/photos/alangauldphotos _______________________________________________ Tutor maillist - Tutor@python.org To unsubscribe or change subscription options: https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/tutor