TL;DR

Here we are with TASK #1 from The Weekly Challenge #129. Enjoy!

# The challenge

You are given a tree and a node of the given tree.

Write a script to find out the distance of the given node from the root.

Example 1:

Tree:
1
/ \
2   3
\
4
/ \
5   6

Node: 6
Output: 3 as the distance of given node 6 from the root (1).

Node: 5
Output: 3

Node: 2
Output: 1

Node: 4
Output: 2


Example 2:

Tree:
1
/ \
2   3
/     \
4       5
\     /
6   7
/ \
8   9

Node: 7
Output: 3 as the distance of given node 6 from the root (1).

Node: 8
Output: 4

Node: 6
Output: 3


# The questions

I keep calling this section questions, but who am I kidding? It’s a way to take some assumptions and try to bend the challenge to something that tastes good for me.

Which is the case here. Nowhere we’re talking about binary trees, although the examples’ shape seems to hint that they are indeed. But I’ll still read only tree and assume that each node can have an undefined number of children.

Another curious thing is the labeling. Or lack thereof. What does it mean that we are given […] a node? Do we get the whole node as it appears in the (well, our) representation of the tree, or are we given a label associated to it?

It might indeed make a difference. While in a tree nodes are arranged in a specific shape, their label might be repeated across the tree and so defining one distance from the root might not be proper. Anyway, we’ll assume that:

• we’re given a label to look for, and
• labels are unique across the whole tree.

Enough, let’s go to the solution!

# The solution

This challenge is like a mosquito that is perfect for the cannon I developed some time ago.

## Raku

You know how a tree is actually a graph that has some additional constraints? Well, now you know. Which means that whatever works for a generic graph, works on trees to. Including a generic Depth-First Algorithm Implementation, which I talked a bit in Graph visit algorithms in cglib-raku by the way.

In this case, we will leverage two hooks in the graph visit:

• discovery-action: this is called as soon as a node is discovered, which happens at most once per visit;
• leave-action: this is called when the algorithm has done with a node and is about to leave it for good.

To measure the distance from the root node is the same as measuring at which depth a node is located. To do this, we keep track of $depth, increasing it for discovery-actions and decreasing it for leave-actions: sub depth ($root, $label) { my$depth = 0;
dfv(
$root, discover-action => ->$n, $parent { return$depth if $n<label> eq$label;
++$depth; }, leave-action => ->$n, $parent { --$depth },
);
return NaN;
}


Well… there’s so much to unpack here!!!

First thing is the seemengly casual return $depth if ..., which is basically when we hit the target node and have to look no further. This cannot be done in Perl, not like this: the discover-action would be a full-fledged sub in that case, which would mean that the return would be related to the sub. Things are differente here, though. The discover-action key points to a Block of code, which is like a sub’s small brother that has no return capabilities on its own. Hence, that return refers to sub depth actually, which is exactly what we are after. Yay! Another little but crucial thing is how we call dfv. Note, no space between the function name and the opening parentheses. Had I put any… the whole thing would be different. To see why, let’s take a look: > sub whatever ($head, *@tail) { $head.^name.put;$head.put }
&whatever
>
> whatever(1, 2, 3)
Int
1
>
> whatever (1, 2, 3)
List
1 2 3


Hence, when the open parenthesis is immediately after the function name, it marks the start of the arguments list. If there’s a space, though, the space itself is supposed to mark the beginning of the arguments list, hence we’re passing a single List (1, 2, 3).

Last, function dfv is a littly currying of the original depth-first implementation:

sub dfv ($root, *%named) { return depth-first-visit( successors => ->$n {
$n<children>:exists ??$n<children>.Slip !! [].Slip },
start      => [$root], identifier => ->$n { $n<label> }, |%named, ); }  Why did I factor this into its own function? Well… for reusing it, of course! What would be this program without proper visualization of a tree? And how do we generate the visualization, if not by doing another depth-first visit?!? Here’s the complete program in Raku, should you want to play with it (buckle up!): #!/usr/bin/env raku use v6; sub MAIN ($target = 3) {
{
my $n3 = node(3, node(4, (5, 6).map({node($_)}) ));
my $root = node(1, node(2),$n3);
print-tree($root); put depth($root, $target); } put ''; { my$n2 = node(2, node(4, node(6, (8, 9).map({node($_)}) ))); my$n3 = node(3, node(5, node(7)));
my $root = node(1,$n2, $n3); print-tree($root);
put depth($root,$target);
}
}

sub node ($l, *@c) { my$h = (label => $l, children => @c).hash } sub print-tree ($root) {
my %is-last;
my @prefix;
dfv(
$root, discover-action => ->$n, $parent { my$label = 'o-- ' ~ $n<label>; if (@prefix) { put ' ', @prefix.join(''); put ' ', @prefix[0..*-2].join(''), ' ',$label;
}
else {
put $label; } @prefix[*-1] = ' ' if %is-last{$n<label>};
@prefix.push: ' |';
%is-last{$n<children>[*-1]<label>} = 1 if$n<children>.elems;
},
leave-action => -> $n,$parent { @prefix.pop },
);
}

sub depth ($root,$label) {
my $depth = 0; dfv($root,
discover-action => -> $n,$parent {
return $depth if$n<label> eq $label; ++$depth;
},
leave-action => -> $n,$parent { --$depth }, ); return NaN; } sub dfv ($root, *%named) {
return depth-first-visit(
successors => -> $n {$n<children>:exists ?? $n<children>.Slip !! [].Slip }, start => [$root],
identifier => -> $n {$n<label> },
|%named,
);
}

sub depth-first-visit (
:&discover-action,       # first time a node is found
:action(:&visit-action), # when node is visited
:&skip-action,           # node skipped due previous visit
:&leave-action,          # node visiting ends
:identifier(:&id) = -> $item {~$item},
:&successors!,
:@start!,
) {
my @s = @start.map: { &discover-action($_, Nil) if &discover-action; %a{&id($_)} = [&successors($_)]; [$_, Nil] };
while @s {
my ($v,$pred) = @s[*-1]; # "top" of the stack
&visit-action($v,$pred) if &visit-action;
my $vid = &id($v);
if %a{$vid}.elems { my$w = %a{$vid}.shift; my$wid = &id($w); if (%a{$wid}:exists) {
&skip-action($w,$v) if &skip-action;
}
else {
&discover-action($w,$v) if &discover-action;
%a{$wid} = [&successors($w)];
@s.push: [$w,$v];
}
}
else {
&leave-action($v,$pred) if &leave-action;
@s.pop;
}
}
return %a.keys;
}


This is an example representation of a tree, thanks to print-tree:

o-- 1
|
o-- 2
| |
| o-- 4
|   |
|   o-- 6
|     |
|     o-- 8
|     |
|     o-- 9
|
o-- 3
|
o-- 5
|
o-- 7


I will never admit that print-tree took me the most of the time to get this program work 🙄

## Perl

As anticipated, we took advantage of a feature we have in Raku, so we will have to do it the right way on our own:

sub depth ($root,$label) {
my $depth = 0; eval { depth_first_visit( start =>$root,
successors => sub ($n) { ($n->{children} // [])->@* },
identifier => sub ($n) {$n->{label} },
pre_action => sub ($n,$parent) {
die 'done!' if $n->{label} eq$label;
++$depth; }, post_action => sub { --$depth },
);
1;
} or return $depth; return 'NaN'; }  Yes, yes… we’re abusing eval/die to get out of the tree visit as soon as we get to the result. Exceptional, right? Also, the Perl version of the depth-first visit is a bit older and less sophisticated, relying on pre_action and post_action. Luckily for us these two suffice to do what we are after. Here’s the complete Perl program, for the masochAHEMcuriuos: #!/usr/bin/env perl use v5.24; use warnings; use experimental 'signatures'; no warnings 'experimental::signatures'; use Data::Dumper; my$target = shift || 2;

{
my $n2 = node(2, node(4, node(6, map {node($_)} (8, 9))));
my $n3 = node(3, node(5, node(7))); my$root = node(1, $n2,$n3);
local $Data::Dumper::Indent = 1; say Dumper($root);
say depth($root,$target);
}

sub node ($l, @c) { return {label =>$l, children => \@c} }

sub depth ($root,$label) {
my $depth = 0; eval { depth_first_visit( start =>$root,
successors => sub ($n) { ($n->{children} // [])->@* },
identifier => sub ($n) {$n->{label} },
pre_action => sub ($n,$parent) {
die 'done!' if $n->{label} eq$label;
++$depth; }, post_action => sub { --$depth },
);
1;
} or return $depth; return 'NaN'; } sub depth_first_visit { my %args = (@_ && ref($_[0])) ? %{$_[0]} : @_; my @reqs = qw< start successors >; exists($args{$_}) || die "missing parameter '$_'" for @reqs;
my ($start,$succs) = @args{@reqs};
my $id_of =$args{identifier} || sub { return "$_[0]" }; my$pre_action  = $args{pre_action} || undef; my$post_action = $args{post_action} || undef; my$skip_action = $args{skip_action} || undef; my %adjacents = ($id_of->($start) => [$succs->($start)]); my @stack = ([$start, undef]);
$pre_action->($start, undef) if $pre_action; while (@stack) { my ($v, $pred) = @{$stack[-1]}; # "peek"
my $vid =$id_of->($v); if (@{$adjacents{$vid}}) { my$w = shift @{$adjacents{$vid}};
my $wid =$id_of->($w); if (exists$adjacents{$wid}) { # already visited$skip_action->($w,$v) if $skip_action; } else { # new node to be visited$adjacents{$wid} = [$succs->($w)]; push @stack, [$w, $v];$pre_action->($w,$v) if $pre_action; } } else {$post_action->($v,$pred) if \$post_action;
pop @stack;
} # finished with this frame
}
return unless defined wantarray; # don't bother with void context

And now, after this long, boring tirade… have -Ofun and stay safe, folks!