Which node go in left or right on addition of weight while huffman tree creation

问题

I am trying to create a Huffman tree and i am bit confused by reading several links on internet. Some add the greater(in terms of weight) child nodes in left or some on right.

So my question:

(1)Is it really a matter that where to add the nodes(in left or right) ?

(2) May i add node with greater weight in right or lower weight in Left ?

Thanks for the help.

回答1:

As long as you're consistent, it makes no difference.

Either you put all the lower weights on left children and all the higher weights on right children, or vice-versa.

At the bottom line, left and right will only be variable names in your code, with no physical meaning whatsoever.

UPDATE:

If you are not consistent, then the resulting Huffman tree will not necessarily yield the best possible compression that can be achieved for the given input using the Huffman compression algorithm.

来源：https://stackoverflow.com/questions/22352202/which-node-go-in-left-or-right-on-addition-of-weight-while-huffman-tree-creation