Data Structures Questions Medium
The main difference between a binary tree and a binary search tree lies in their structural properties and the rules they follow.
A binary tree is a hierarchical data structure in which each node has at most two children, referred to as the left child and the right child. The nodes in a binary tree can be arranged in any order, and there are no specific rules or constraints regarding the values stored in the nodes. This means that a binary tree can have nodes with any value and does not necessarily follow any particular order.
On the other hand, a binary search tree (BST) is a specific type of binary tree that follows a particular ordering property. In a BST, for any given node, all the values in its left subtree are less than the value of the node, and all the values in its right subtree are greater than the value of the node. This ordering property allows for efficient searching, insertion, and deletion operations.
To summarize, the key difference between a binary tree and a binary search tree is that a binary tree can have nodes arranged in any order and does not follow any specific rules regarding values, whereas a binary search tree follows a specific ordering property that enables efficient searching based on the values stored in the nodes.