A Tricky Recursive Situation in Binary Trees

[jheard901]

I'm trying to obtain a value through recursive calls, the problem I am encountering is that the first call has the same function which causes it to overwrite the variable I am trying to obtain.

Initially:

  //some variables I'm using
  stringCount = 0;
  value = '>';
  char dLetter;

  //the function I initially use
  Traverse(root, value);

  //the container for a node
  typedef struct treeNode //container for a node
  {
    char letter; //letter of node
    treeNode* leftChild; //points to next node
    treeNode* rightChild; //points to previous node
  };
  treeNode* root;

  //stuff you should know
  root->letter = a;
  (root->rightChild)->letter = p;

Here's my code:

void BinaryTree::Traverse(treeNode* tree, string value) //similar to Retrieve
{
  while(stringCount < value.size()) {
    if(value[stringCount] == '*') { //special case when string translates into root node
      stringCount++;
    }
    else if(value[stringCount] == '<') {
      stringCount++;
      Traverse(tree->leftChild, value);
    }
    else { //assumes (value[stringCount] == '>')
      stringCount++;
      Traverse(tree->rightChild, value);
    }
  }
  dLetter = tree->letter;
}

I want this to return dLetter = tree->letter of the last node traversed to, which would make dLetter = 'p', but once reaching the base case, it reads the previous Traverse() function as well making dLetter then equal that node's letter, which is 'a' (the root node).

[jheard901]

I just figured this out after brainstorming a little bit more. So I simply stuck the

dLetter = tree->letter

inside each conditional. Here is one example:

else if(value[stringCount] == '<') {
  stringCount++;
  dLetter = (tree->leftChild)->letter;
  Traverse(tree->leftChild, value);
}