Red-Black Tree Data Structure
Introduction
Red-Black Tree is a kind of self-balancing binary search tree. Each node stores an extra bit representing "color" ("red" or "black"), used to ensure the tree remains approximately balanced during insertions and deletions.
Key Properties
- Every node is either red or black.
- The root is black.
- All leaves (NIL nodes) are black.
- If a red node has children then, both are black.
- Every path from a given node to any of its descendant NIL nodes goes through the same number of black nodes.
Benefits of Using Red-Black Trees
Provides good worst-case guarantees for insertion, deletion, and search operations.
Balancing the tree requires only small (local) rotations.
Used in many real-world applications like the Linux kernel, Java Collections Framework, and more.
Example Image
Learn More
For more detailed information, visit Wikipedia page on Red-Black Trees.