Algorithms in C, Parts 1-4: Fundamentals, Data Structures, Sorting, Searching, Third Edition

Chapter Thirteen. Balanced Trees

The bst algorithms in the previous chapter work well for a wide variety of applications, but they do have the problem of bad worst-case performance. What is more, it is embarrassingly true that the bad worst case for the standard BST algorithm, like that for quicksort, is one that is likely to occur in practice if the user of the algorithm is not watching for it. Files already in order, files with large numbers of duplicate keys, files in reverse order, files with alternating large and small keys, or files with any large segment having a simple structure can all lead to quadratic BST construction times and linear search times.

In the ideal case, we could keep our trees perfectly balanced, like the tree depicted ...