Niceguy65 Posts - Answer Overflow

Niceguy65

•Created by Niceguy65 on 4/24/2025 in #java-help

I need help understanding a part of recursion for a binary search tree.

Hello I basically need to implement a recursive function for insertion of a binary tree. I already implemented the chunk of insertion function (wether it's largest or smaller than root) but there's an aspect of confusion.

 public void insert(E data) {
        root = insert(root, data);
    }

    private Node<E> insert(Node<E> value, E data) {
        if(value == null) {
           return new Node<E>(data);
        }
        else if (data.compareTo(value.data) > 0 )  {
            value.right = insert(value.right, data); 
        }
        else if(data.compareTo(value.data) <= 0) {
            value.left = insert(value.left, data);
        }
        return value; 

    }

The problem I have is this line:

public void insert(E data) {
        root = insert(root, data);
    }

Is the root actively changing? My partner tried explaining to me how it doesn't change except for the first root. let's say I want to insert ten and the root is null, the root will always be 10. Is this right? Thank you.

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