NIST

multiway tree

(data structure)

Definition: A tree with any number of children for each node.

See also binary tree, k-ary tree, B-tree, binary tree representation of trees.

Note: A typical implementation is to have a list of child nodes at each node, rather than a fixed number of children. A more elaborate implementation is to have a fixed number of children, to handle most nodes efficiently, and a linked list for those rare nodes that have more children. See also the binary tree representation of trees.

Author: PEB

More information

explanation and example


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Entry modified 27 October 2005.
HTML page formatted Mon Feb 2 13:10:40 2015.

Cite this as:
Paul E. Black, "multiway tree", in Dictionary of Algorithms and Data Structures [online], Vreda Pieterse and Paul E. Black, eds. 27 October 2005. (accessed TODAY) Available from: http://www.nist.gov/dads/HTML/multiwaytree.html