Searching a tree using LINQ

It's a misconception that this requires recursion. It will require a stack or a queue and the easiest way is to implement it using recursion. For sake of completeness I'll provide a non-recursive answer.

static IEnumerable<Node> Descendants(this Node root)
{
    var nodes = new Stack<Node>(new[] {root});
    while (nodes.Any())
    {
        Node node = nodes.Pop();
        yield return node;
        foreach (var n in node.Children) nodes.Push(n);
    }
}

Use this expression for example to use it:

root.Descendants().Where(node => node.Key == SomeSpecialKey)

If you want to maintain Linq like syntax, you can use a method to obtain all the descendants (children + children's children etc.)

static class NodeExtensions
{
    public static IEnumerable<Node> Descendants(this Node node)
    {
        return node.Children.Concat(node.Children.SelectMany(n => n.Descendants()));
    }
}

This enumerable can then be queried like any other using where or first or whatever.


Searching a Tree of Objects with Linq

public static class TreeToEnumerableEx
{
    public static IEnumerable<T> AsDepthFirstEnumerable<T>(this T head, Func<T, IEnumerable<T>> childrenFunc)
    {
        yield return head;

        foreach (var node in childrenFunc(head))
        {
            foreach (var child in AsDepthFirstEnumerable(node, childrenFunc))
            {
                yield return child;
            }
        }

    }

    public static IEnumerable<T> AsBreadthFirstEnumerable<T>(this T head, Func<T, IEnumerable<T>> childrenFunc)
    {
        yield return head;

        var last = head;
        foreach (var node in AsBreadthFirstEnumerable(head, childrenFunc))
        {
            foreach (var child in childrenFunc(node))
            {
                yield return child;
                last = child;
            }
            if (last.Equals(node)) yield break;
        }

    }
}

Tags:

C#

.Net

Linq