Binary Search Tree

About This Project

A generic, header-only binary search tree implemented in C++ with modern memory-management techniques. The BST<T> template works with any comparable type, supports all three standard traversal orders, and can serialize itself to both human-readable text and raw binary. Built as a second-semester data structures project.

Features

• Template class BST<T> — works with any type that defines comparison operators
• RAII memory management — std::unique_ptr node ownership, no manual delete
• Full rule-of-five semantics — copy and move constructors and assignment
• Three traversals — inorder, preorder, postorder
• Serialization — text-based and raw-binary read/write
• Custom type support — demonstrated with a P_info person-record class
• Leak detection — _CrtDumpMemoryLeaks in MSVC debug builds

Engineering Highlights

unique_ptr node ownership — Each node holds its children as std::unique_ptr, so destroying a node automatically frees its entire subtree with no explicit cleanup traversal. The tree’s move constructor and move assignment transfer the root in O(1) via std::move, making returned/temporary trees cheap.

Structure-preserving copy — Copying is a preorder traversal of the source followed by reinsertion into the destination. Because a BST’s shape is fully determined by insertion order, visiting the source root before its children reproduces an identical structure — not merely the same set of values.