node
First I'm going to update your Node interface so that it's possible to set left and right branches when creating nodes -
class Node:
def __init__(self, val=None, left=None, right=None):
self.left = left
self.right = right
self.val = val
This allows us to create tress more ergonomically, such as -
t = Node(10, Node(11, None, Node(5)), Node(2))
traverse
Now we write a generic traverse procedure. This allows us to separate 1) the traversal of our tree from 2) the intended operation we want to perform on each tree element -
def traverse(tree):
if tree is None:
return
else:
yield tree.val
yield from traverse(tree.left)
yield from traverse(tree.right)
Now the need for sum_leafs disappears. We have decoupled traversal logic from summing logic. We can calculate the sum of leafs with a simple combination of sum and traverse -
print(sum(traverse(t)))
# 28
don't repeat yourself
Or, instead of summing the values, we could write a search function to find the first value that passes a predicate -
def search(test, tree):
for val in traverse(tree):
if test(val):
return val
print(search(lambda x: x < 10, t))
# 5
print(search(lambda x: x > 99, t))
# None
Or, we could simply collect each value into a list -
print(list(traverse(t)))
# [ 10, 11, 5, 2 ]
As you can see, removing the traversal logic from each function that depends on our tree can be a huge help.
without generators
If you don't like generators, you can write the eager version of traverse which always returns a list. The difference now is there is no way to partially traverse the tree. Note the similarities this program shares with the generator version -
def traverse(t):
if t is None:
return [] # <-- empty
else:
return \
[ t.val
, *traverse(t.left) # <-- yield from
, *traverse(t.right) # <-- yield from
]
print(traverse(t))
# [ 10, 11, 5, 2 ]