Level Order traversal of left child right sibling implementation.

Under the homework rule, you have to make a start yourself, and ask for specific help, we cannot start it for you.

Sounds like you should already have a program with tree/heap implemented. If not, thats the 1st step of this assignment.

Ah i figured it out myself, I had written

void PairingHeap::levelorder(PairingNode *treePtr,
                                          FunctionType visit)
{
      queue<PairingNode*> levelorderQueue;      //make temp queue for level order traversal
      PairingNode *temp = root;      //make a copy of the root
      if (temp != NULL)
      {
            levelorderQueue.push(temp); //enqueue the root
            while (!levelorderQueue.empty())
                  {
                        /*cout<<"in while loop"<<endl;*/
                        temp = levelorderQueue.front(); //temp becomes first item in queue
                        levelorderQueue.pop();      //pop first item in queue
                        visit(temp->item);//this basically means cout temp (visit is a function designed to output)
                        cout<<' ';            //spacers
                                                
                        if (temp->leftChildPtr != NULL)
                              levelorderQueue.push(temp->leftChildPtr);
                        
                        while (temp->rightSiblingPtr != NULL)
                        {
                              levelorderQueue.push(temp->rightSiblingPtr);
                              temp = temp->rightSiblingPtr;
                        }
                  }
      }
}//end level order traversal

the while(temp->rightSiblingPtr != NULL) needed to be if instead of while
at least i THINK this works

Is that enough of a start for you to tell me if I have it right?  I know without the whole header/cpp you might not understand, but it should be relatively clear there

Well, it looks ok to me at first glance. I think your fix is appropriate. Does it output as you expect? That is the important thing.

I believe so! Now if you don't mind helping with a followup question, i keep getting a segfault when I try to delete min, I have tried writing two functions to delete min (my merge function clearly works since it was able to build the data structure  from an input set)

here are my two deletion functions if you don't mind looking:

void PairingHeap::deleteMinimum()
{
      PairingNode* temp = root;
      if (root->leftChildPtr == NULL)
            root = NULL;
      root = joinSiblings(root->leftChildPtr);
      delete temp;//maybe take this out?
      temp = NULL;//-------------------
}

PairingNode* PairingHeap::joinSiblings(PairingNode* first)
{
      if (first->rightSiblingPtr == NULL)
            return first;
      //create vector to hold all the siblings
      vector <PairingNode*> heapVector;
      while (first->rightSiblingPtr != NULL) //toss all the heaps into the queue/array/vector/call it what you like :)
      {
            heapVector.push_back(first);      //enqueue
            PairingNode* temp = first;            //break the bonds between siblings
            first->rightSiblingPtr = NULL;      //broken
            first = temp->rightSiblingPtr;      //repeat for next sibling
      }
      //merge the remaining trees
      first = heapVector.at(0);
      heapVector.erase(heapVector.begin());
      while (!heapVector.empty())
      {
            first = merge(first, heapVector.at(0)); //first element
            heapVector.erase(heapVector.begin());
      }
      return first;
}

also i've narrowed down that the seg fault is occuring in the while loop of joinSiblings

     if (root->leftChildPtr == NULL)
            root = NULL;
      root = joinSiblings(root->leftChildPtr);  // what happens here if root is null? NULL pointer access at root->

Always check p if you are going to use p->

that's a good point, except that I check for root = null before calling that function. but it's true, i would be accessing null otherwise.  It appears that it's really breaking in
while (first->rightSiblingPtr != NULL) //toss all the heaps into the queue/array/vector/call it what you like :)
      {
            heapVector.push_back(first);      //enqueue
            PairingNode* temp = first;            //break the bonds between siblings
            first->rightSiblingPtr = NULL;      //broken
            first = temp->rightSiblingPtr;      //repeat for next sibling
      }

>>that's a good point, except that I check for root = null before calling that function

Nope, not quite. You are explicitily setting root = null the line before, if the if() condition is true. Note the 2nd line in the 3 line excerpt I included.

If you are using Visual Studio, run it under debug mode and when it generates the exception, debug to find the line it broke on and examine the values of the pointers.

ah yes, good point. I fixed that part of it, but I just did some basic cout's at various part of the code to see what the last line executed is (yes yes, shame on me for not taking the time to learn how to use a decent debugger) and it's breaking at the line

first = temp->rightSiblingPtr;

Bugs below. Usually walking through a data structure this is bad form:

while(ptr->next) ...

Its better form to do:

while(ptr)

or at least

while(ptr && ptr->next)

The reason I say it is due to the mistake you made below. See my comments inline. When 2 pointers point to the same node, modifying one of the members of that node affects both pointers, because it is the same object.

while (first->rightSiblingPtr != NULL) // I RECOMMEND if(first && first->rightSiblingPtr)
{
    heapVector.push_back(first);
    PairingNode* temp = first; // TEMP = FIRST, SO ANY CHANGES TO FIRST MEMBERS APPLY TO TEMP
    first->rightSiblingPtr = NULL;  // temp->rightSiblingPtr now = NULL as as well
    first = temp->rightSiblingPtr;      // first now equals NULL!
}

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>>I just did some basic cout's

Another point of advice. When code is crashing don't use cout to debug, use cerr. Why? cout is buffered. Code can crash before the buffer is flushed. cerr will write immediately, no buffering.

Ok, I should have realized that affecting one affects the other, so is there a clear way to 'break' the links between the new collection of heaps without losing them all in the process (since if i say first->rightSiblingPtr = NULL we lose all of the siblings and their children, etc

ah shoot, for some reason the deletion still isn't working, though the segfault is gone...now it's a logic problem

i'm getting strange output for the deletions, as illustrated by my output:

--------------------
Pairing Heap Portion
--------------------
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
Levelorder
1 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

deleting min #1
Levelorder
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

deleting min #2
Levelorder
4 5 6 7 8 9 10

deleting min #3
Levelorder
5 6 7 8 9 10

---------------------------------------------------
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Levelorder
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

deleting min #1
Levelorder
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

deleting min #2
Levelorder
3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

deleting min #3
Levelorder
4 5 6 7 8 9 10

---------------------------------------------------
1 3 5 7 9 2 4 6 8 10
Levelorder
1 10 8 6 4 2 9 7 5 3

deleting min #1
Levelorder
2 5 7 9 4 6 8 10

deleting min #2
Levelorder
5 9 7

deleting min #3
Levelorder
9

---------------------------------------------------

Yes, it appears to be deleting the node (1) and its left child maybe?