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From: darin@ut-dillo.UUCP (Darin Adler)
Newsgroups: net.unix
Subject: Re: B-trees
Message-ID: <222@ut-dillo.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 5-Dec-85 14:03:46 EST
Article-I.D.: ut-dillo.222
Posted: Thu Dec  5 14:03:46 1985
Date-Received: Sat, 7-Dec-85 04:32:10 EST
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Organization: UTexas Computation Center, Austin, Texas
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I have always (since I have been aware of, and used the B-tree data
structure) thought of binary trees as being a degenerate case of a
B-tree.  In other words, where B-trees have between n and 2n children
per node, a binary tree has between 1 and 2 children per node (n=1).
Unfortunately, the algorithms for B-trees do not work in this
degenerate case (thus binary trees cannot be balanced in the simple
way that B-trees are).  I am sure that there is something else
fundamentally wrong with this analogy.  Any data structures expert
want to comment and/or enlighten me?
-- 
Darin Adler
{gatech,harvard,ihnp4,seismo}!ut-sally!ut-dillo!darin