insertion binary search tree in C - c

Question

I've been stuck on the insertion part of the binary search tree. I get so confused with nested structs. The basic idea of this program is to create a bst that is able to hold names and double values which get stored by value (obviously).
Example: I want to store
Jane 3.14
John 3.233
Luke 6.4
Mike 1.4
so the bst would look like
3.14
/ \
1.4 3.233
\
6.4
however I'm having trouble with the insertHelper recursion portion of the code. The hash table is a bonus part of the code that I'll try implementing at a later time. Thank you for your help!
typedef struct name_val // holds name and value
{
char *name;
double value;
}NAME_VAL;
typedef struct node //binary search tree
{
NAME_VAL *nV;
struct node *left;
struct node *right;
}NODE;
struct tmap_struct //handle for bst and hashtable
{
int nL; //nodes on left
int nR; //nodes on right
NODE *root;
NODE **table;
};
int tmap_insert(TMAP_PTR hashTree, char * name, double val)
{
if(hashTree->root == NULL)
{
NODE *bst = (NODE *)malloc(sizeof(NODE));
NAME_VAL *root = (NAME_VAL *)malloc(sizeof(NAME_VAL));
bst->nV = root;
bst->nV->value = val;
strcpy(bst->nV->name, name);
hashTree->root = bst;
hashTree->nL = 0;
hashTree->nR = 0;
}
else
insertHelper(hashTree->root, val, name);
}
void insertHelper(TMAP_PTR hashTree, int val, char * name)
{
if(val < hashTree->root->nV->value)
{
if(hashTree->root->left == NULL)
{
hashTree->root->left = (NODE *)malloc(sizeof(NODE));
hashTree->root->left->nV = (NAME_VAL *) malloc(sizeof(NAME_VAL));
strcpy(hashTree->root->left->nV->name, name);
hashTree->root->nV->value = val;
(hashTree->nL)++;
}
else
insertHelper(hashTree->root->left, val, name);
}
else
{
if(hashTree->root->right == NULL)
{
hashTree->root->right = (NODE *)malloc(sizeof(NODE));
hashTree->root->right->nV = (NAME_VAL *)malloc(sizeof(NAME_VAL));
strcpy(hashTree->root->left->nV->name,name);
hashTree->root->nV->value = val;
(hashTree->nR)++;
}
else
insertHelper(hashTree->root->right, val, name);
}
}

Answer 1

I doubt this compiles. Is that the problem you're having?
From what I can see, you have declared insertHelper with the wrong type for its first parameter. It should take NODE* values, not TMAP_PTR values. That's because you always call it with nodes out of your tree.
So the first part of the function should look like this:
void insertHelper(NODE *node, int val, char * name)
{
if(val < node->nV->value)
{
if(node->left == NULL)
{
node->left = (NODE *)malloc(sizeof(NODE));
node->left->nV = (NAME_VAL *) malloc(sizeof(NAME_VAL));
strcpy(node->left->nV->name, name);
node->left->nV->value = val;
}
else
insertHelper(node->left, val, name);
}
//.....
Note that I removed the line:
(hashTree->nR)++;
It hardly even makes sense to track this information, unless maybe you do it at the node level.
But if you must, you could have insertHelper recursively return a positive or negative value to indicate what side it inserted on. But that doesn't makes sense. What is it on the right of? You may have inserted it on the right of a node that was in the left half of the tree.
If you store this information on each node, you can recursively update the node above as you return from insertHelper. Maybe that's what you were trying to do. Balanced tree implementations do something similar - AVL trees store the maximum depth of the tree at a node and use that to do branch rotations for rebalancing.

Answer 2

You'll have to adapt mine(It's almost standard C besides the unneeded template and class), but it's a similar algorithm: (I believe, I didn't look at any source for my own purposes.)
template<typename T>
class BST {
protected:
typedef struct node_t {
struct node_t * dir[2];
T data;
} node;
node * root;
void insert_node(node * active_node, T data){ //call with node *root;
int next = data < active_node->data ? 0 : 1;
if(active_node->dir[next] == NULL){
active_node->dir[next] = new node;
active_node->dir[next]->dir[0] = NULL;
active_node->dir[next]->dir[1] = NULL;
active_node->data = data;
} else
insert_node(active_node->dir[next], data);
}
public:
BST() : root(new node){root->dir[0] = NULL; root->dir[1] = NULL; root->data = 0;}
~BST(){}
}