> I understand that binary trees can be used to sort data. But XSLT already has <xsl:sort>, so using binary trees for
> sorting isn't a particularly compelling use case.

I guess you mean "binary search trees* -- other kinds of binary trees
such as the heap data structure do not have the complete set of their
items sorted.

A binary *search* tree (and I mean *balanced* binary serch tree) has
more useful properties than just that it one of its serializations
presents the values in sorted order.

A binary search tree  allows searches and insertions with efficiency
of  O(log(N)). In contrast, an insertion in an array or in a sequence
is O(N) -- the whole array needs to be copied (even the non-functional
array) and the initial part of a sequence (the sub-sequence before the
insertion point) of a persistent (functional sequence) needs also to
be copied -- this is on average N / 2 -- so again we have O(N) here.

The deletion in a balanced binary serch tree  is also O(log(N)).

This makes the balanced binary search tree quite good even for
implementing dictionaries and sets. A disadvantage for such binary
search tree -based  implementations is that the value-space must have
total ordering (while other implementations of a dictionary or set
require only an equality (equivalence) operation).


Cheers,

Dimitre.

On Sun, Dec 9, 2012 at 2:49 PM, Costello, Roger L. <costello@xxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Hi Folks,
>
> Dimitre has created a beautiful set of functions for building binary trees [1].
>
> I understand that binary trees can be used to sort data. But XSLT already has <xsl:sort>, so using binary trees for sorting isn't a particularly compelling use case.
>
> I am seeking a compelling use case for binary trees -- given XML document foo.xml and processing requirement P, a binary tree is ideally suited.
>
> Would you provide a simple, compelling use case please?
>
> /Roger
>
> [1] http://dnovatchev.wordpress.com/2012/01/09/the-binary-search-tree-data-structurehaving-fun-with-xpath-3-0/