Find kth smallest element in a binary search tree in Optimum way

Posted by Bragaadeesh on Stack Overflow See other posts from Stack Overflow or by Bragaadeesh
Published on 2010-02-24T20:18:05Z Indexed on 2010/05/13 7:04 UTC
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data-structures

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binary-trees

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binary-search

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algorithm

Hi,

I need to find the kth smallest element in the binary search tree without using any static/global variable. How to achieve it efficiently? The solution that I have in my mind is doing the operation in O(n), the worst case since I am planning to do an inorder traversal of the entire tree. But deep down I feel that I am not using the BST property here. Is my assumptive solution correct or is there a better one available ?

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