Swift: Using Depth-First Search for LeetCode Problems

Algorithms in Swift

The DFS for this tree is 3, 5, 10, 15, 20

Before we start

Depth-first search for trees is commonly used for LeetCode challenges, even those rated as Medium or above on the platform.

Prerequisites

To follow along with this piece, you should be able to create a binary tree using insertions (although a simple implementation is shown below).

It would be helpful to be familiar with the concept of recursion, and the solution makes use of Swift’s inout parameters

Keywords and Terminology

Root node: The first node in a tree data structure Tree: A data structure with a root value and left and right subtrees

Using DFS for the sample tree

This is a recursive process going on here. This particular implementation of DFS will follow the algorithm, after starting at the root node (this represents an inorder traversal):

• explore left subtree
• traverse (print out) the node