Algorithm Design Questions
The main difference between a breadth-first traversal and a depth-first traversal of a binary tree lies in the order in which the nodes are visited.
In a breadth-first traversal, also known as level-order traversal, the nodes are visited level by level, starting from the root node and moving horizontally to the next level before moving to the next node. This means that all the nodes at the same level are visited before moving to the next level. This traversal uses a queue data structure to keep track of the nodes to be visited.
On the other hand, in a depth-first traversal, the nodes are visited vertically, starting from the root node and moving down to the leftmost child node before backtracking and visiting the right child node. There are three common types of depth-first traversals: pre-order traversal (root, left, right), in-order traversal (left, root, right), and post-order traversal (left, right, root). These traversals use a stack data structure to keep track of the nodes to be visited.
In summary, the main difference is that breadth-first traversal visits nodes level by level, while depth-first traversal visits nodes vertically, exploring as far as possible before backtracking.