Given two identical DOM trees find same node in tree B

Question

So for the question 'Given two identical DOM trees, and an element in one tree, find the same element in the second tree'.

I can solve it in two ways -

1. Start at the given element and traverse up to the root of tree A - save the path and then follow the path down the second tree to the element.

2. Start at the root and traverse both trees at the same time using breadth first search - once I find nodeA in tree A return the current node in treeB.

The complexity for the second approach will be O(N) as worst case I could end up going through every node in the tree to find the element.

For the first approach is the complexity simply O(P) where P is the length of the path from the given node to the root? At most I will go up P nodes and then down P nodes in treeB and 2P ~= P. I heard someone say it's Log(N) but I'm not sure how that could be.

Answer 1

You are right, the complexity of the second algorithm is $O(P)$ where $P$ is the depth of the given vertex in the second tree. Notice that, without additional assumptions, it might very well be $P=\Omega(N)$ (think, e.g., of a path rooted in one endpoint where the given vertex is the other endpoint).

If the second tree is somehow "balanced", for some reasonable definition of balanced* then its height will be at most $O(\log n)$, hence $P=O(\log n)$.

*Since your tree is not necessarily binary you'd have to provide a suitable definition of balanced. A sufficient condition for $P=O(N)$ would be for the heights of the two tallest subtrees rooted in two children of each node of the second tree to differ by at most an additive constant.