Pseudocode to compare two trees

Question

This is a problem I\'ve encountered a few times, and haven\'t been convinced that I\'ve used the most efficient logic.

As an example, presume I have two trees: one is a

Answer 1

A simple example code in python.

class Node(object):
  def __init__(self, val):
    self.val = val
    self.child = {}

  def get_left(self):
    #if left is not in the child dictionary that means the element does not have a left child
    if 'left' in self.child:
      return self.child['left']
    else:
      return None

  def get_right(self):
    #if right is not in the child dictionary that means the element does not have a rigth child
    if 'right' in self.child:
      return self.child['right']
    else:
      return None


def traverse_tree(a):
  if a is not None:
    print 'current_node : %s' % a.val
    if 'left' in a.child:
      traverse_tree(a.child['left'])

    if 'right' in a.child:
      traverse_tree(a.child['right'])



def compare_tree(a, b):
  if (a is not None and b is None) or (a is None and b is not None):
    return 0
  elif a is not None and b is not None:
    print a.val, b.val
    #print 'currently comparing a : %s, b : %s, left : %s, %s , right : %s, %s' % (a.val, b.val, a.child['left'].val, b.child['left'].val, a.child['right'].val, b.child['right'].val)
    if a.val==b.val and compare_tree(a.get_left(), b.get_left()) and compare_tree(a.get_right(), b.get_right()):
      return 1
    else:
      return 0
  else:
    return 1

#Example
a = Node(1)
b = Node(0)
a.child['left'] = Node(2)
a.child['right'] = Node(3)
a.child['left'].child['left'] = Node(4)
a.child['left'].child['right'] = Node(5)
a.child['right'].child['left'] = Node(6)
a.child['right'].child['right'] = Node(7)
b.child['left'] = Node(2)
b.child['right'] = Node(3)
b.child['left'].child['left'] = Node(4)
#b.child['left'].child['right'] = Node(5)
b.child['right'].child['left'] = Node(6)
b.child['right'].child['right'] = Node(7)
if compare_tree(a, b):
  print 'trees are equal'
else:
  print 'trees are unequal'
#DFS traversal
traverse_tree(a)

Also pasted an example that you can run.