Splitting a node in B+ tree with odd number of keys

Question

This and several other resources suggest to "Always a node that gets the middle key from bottom splits, should drop one item for a new middle key".

To illustrate with an example.

For 5-way B+-tree,

(24, 25, 44, 79) is one of the leaf nodes with its root being (..,24,80,...)

(..,24,80,...)
      \ 
       \ 
        \
       (24, 25, 44, 79)

After Inserting 40.

The node (24, 25, 40, 44, 79) gets overloaded and is forced to split(considering the siblings are full as well).

In such a case, is there any advantage of splitting it as

(24, 25) (40, 44, 79) over (24, 25, 40) (44, 79)

Is this split A

(..,24, 40, 80,...)           
         | \ 
         |  \ 
         |   \
    (24, 25)  (40,44, 79)

better than this split B?

 (..,24, 44, 80,...)           
          | \ 
          |  \ 
          |   \
 (24, 25, 40)  (44, 79)

If so, what makes A correct and B wrong, considering that both are satisfying the rules of the B+ tree.

I couldn't find any resource to back my argument that B is equally correct as A.

Answer 1

There is no advantage to choosing one over the other.

"Real" B+-tree implementations will often rebalance if they can, rather than splitting. When a node becomes overfull, if there is a sibling (whether to the left or the right) which isn't yet full, it's often better to balance the entries evenly between this node and its sibling. This saves an allocation.