README.md

Binary search trees

Consider the following type to represent (labelled) binary trees:

type 'a btree = Empty | Node of 'a * 'a btree * 'a btree;;

A binary search tree is a binary tree where the label of each internal node is (strictly) greater than the labels of its left subtree, and (strictly) less than those of its right subtree.

For instance:

Node(7,
  Node(4,
    Node(1,Empty,Empty),
    Node(5,Empty,Empty)),
  Node(10,Empty,Empty))

is a binary search tree.

Write a function with the following type:

val is_bstree : 'a btree -> ('a -> 'a -> int) -> bool = <fun>

such that is_bstree t comp is true iff t is a binary search tree with respect to the comparison function comp. Recall that, in Ocaml, a comparison between two elements must return 0 if the elements are equal, a positive integer if the first is greater, and a negative integer if the first is smaller. For instance, the built-in polymorphic function compare implements a default comparison.

Then, write a function:

val search : 'a btree -> ('b -> 'a -> int) -> 'b -> bool = <fun>

such that search t comp x evaluates to true iff the label x belongs to the binary search tree.