Python Program to Find Minimum and Maximum Element in Binary Search Tree

Intro

In this program, we’ll create a Python program to find the minimum and maximum elements in a Binary Search Tree (BST). A Binary Search Tree is a binary tree where each node has a value, and for any node, all the values in the left subtree are less than the node’s value, and all the values in the right subtree are greater than the node’s value.

Problem statement

Given a Binary Search Tree, we need to find the minimum and maximum elements present in the tree.

Python Program to Find Minimum and Maximum Element in Binary Search Tree

class TreeNode:
    def __init__(self, value):
        self.value = value
        self.left = None
        self.right = None

def find_min(node):
    if node is None:
        return None
    while node.left is not None:
        node = node.left
    return node.value

def find_max(node):
    if node is None:
        return None
    while node.right is not None:
        node = node.right
    return node.value

root = TreeNode(8)
root.left = TreeNode(3)
root.right = TreeNode(10)
root.left.left = TreeNode(1)
root.left.right = TreeNode(6)
root.right.right = TreeNode(14)
root.left.right.left = TreeNode(4)
root.left.right.right = TreeNode(7)

print("Minimum element:", find_min(root))
print("Maximum element:", find_max(root))

How it works

1. We start by defining a TreeNode class to create nodes of the Binary Search Tree. Each node has a value, left child, and right child.
2. The find_min function takes a node as an argument and traverses to the leftmost node of the tree to find the minimum value.
3. The find_max function takes a node as an argument and traverses to the rightmost node of the tree to find the maximum value.
4. In the example tree, we create a BST and then use the find_min and find_max functions to find and print the minimum and maximum elements.

Input / Output