"David B. Held" <dheld@codelogicconsulting.com> wrote in message news:d2b14r$ekf$1@sea.gmane.org... | Dan Rosen wrote: | > [...] | > And in a general-purpose tree, it would be: | > | > struct node { | > node* parent_; | > node* first_child_; | > node* last_child_; | > node* prev_sibling_; | > node* next_sibling_; | > T* value_; | > }; | > | > Would you consider five pointers to be too much? | | Yes. I don't see what's wrong with my original suggestion: | | template <int K = 2, int N = 1> | struct node | { | node* parent_; | node* child_[K]; | T value_[N]; | }; There is an alternative that doesn't really need a node concept. It goes like this template< class T > class tree { T data_; boost::optional< boost::ptr_vector<tree<T> > > children_; tree* parent_; ... }; for n-ary trees, exchange ptr_vector<> with ptr_array<,N>. -Thorsten