barnnoder

Barnnoder are the direct descendants of a node in a tree or directed graph. In Swedish terminology, barn means child and noder means nodes. The barnnoder of a given node are connected by edges that originate from the parent and point to each child.

In a rooted tree, every node except the root has exactly one parent. The set of barnnoder for a node is the collection of its immediate descendants; the number of barnnoder is the node’s out-degree. The parent–child relationship defines a hierarchical structure, where the root represents the top level and leaves are nodes with no children.

Data structures often store barnnoder by maintaining references or pointers from a node to its children. The specific representation can be an array, a linked list, or other structures depending on the language and use case. In binary trees, a node has up to two barnnoder, commonly referred to as the left and right child. In general k-ary trees there can be up to k barnnoder.

Applications of barnnoder span many domains. They are central to modeling hierarchical data such as file systems and organization charts, as well as to structures used in computing like the DOM tree of web pages and abstract syntax trees in compilers. They also appear in decision trees and various search algorithms that operate on hierarchical data.

Notes: In graphs that are not trees, a node may have multiple parents, and barnnoder can be shared. In trees, however, the parent–child relationship forms a hierarchical, acyclic structure.