Want to save binary tree to disk for “20 questions” game

Question

In short, I\'d like to learn/develop an elegant method to save a binary tree to disk (a general tree, not necessarily a BST). Here is the description of my problem:

I\'

Answer 1

You can store it recursively:

 void encodeState(OutputStream out,Node n) {
        if(n==null) {
            out.write("[null]");
        } else {
           out.write("{");
           out.write(n.nodeDetails());
           encodeState(out, n.yesNode());
           encodeState(out, n.noNode());
           out.write("}");
        }
  }

Devise your own less texty output format. I'm sure I don't need to describe the method to read the resulting output.

This is depth-first traversal. Breadth-first works too.