
580 A Practical Guide to Data Structures and Algorithms Using Java
Split
Merge
indices
0 to t-2
indices
t to 2t-1
t-1
left left
right
parent
parent
right
indices
0 to t-1
indices
0 to t-2
Figure 37.2
An illustration of the B+-tree split and merge methods.
The merge method takes parent, the parent of the two nodes that are to be merged, and index, the
index of this node in its parent’s children array. It merges this node with its neighboring sibling to
the right. This method requires that this node and its right sibling are minimum sized. The changes
from the B-tree merge method are (1) the element e in the parent for which this node is the left child
is not