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Post-order Traversal for File System Deletion

Overview

This project demonstrates post-order traversal applied to a file system deletion scenario. In this code, directories (folders) and files are represented as nodes in a binary tree. The task is to recursively delete all the files and subdirectories before deleting the main directory, which follows the post-order traversal technique.

The structure of the file system in this project is as follows:

           Main (folder)
          /     \
      folder1  folder2
      /    \       \
   file1  file2    file3

Key Concepts:

• Post-order Traversal: In this traversal method, the left subtree is visited first, followed by the right subtree, and finally the root node (i.e., the parent directory).
• File System Representation: Each file or folder is treated as a node in a binary tree.

Code Breakdown

Classes and Functions:

1. Node Class:

   • Represents a folder or file in the file system.
   • Each node has attributes:
     • name: Name of the file or folder.
     • isfile: A boolean indicating whether the node is a file (True) or a folder (False).
     • left and right: Pointers to the left and right children (subfolders or files).

2. post_order Function:

   • Performs a post-order traversal on the binary tree (file system).
   • Recursively visits the left and right subtrees before deleting the current node (file or folder).
   • Deletes files first and then folders, ensuring that all contents are removed before deleting the parent directory.

3. Create_file Function:

   • Builds a sample binary tree structure representing the file system.
   • The root node is the "Main" folder, which contains two subfolders: folder1 and folder2.
   • folder1 contains two files (file1 and file2), and folder2 contains one file (file3).

File System Structure:

           Main (folder)
          /     \
      folder1  folder2
      /    \       \
   file1  file2    file3

This binary tree structure simulates a directory (Main) that contains two subdirectories (folder1 and folder2). The files (file1, file2, file3) are represented as leaf nodes.

How to Run the Code

Prerequisites:

• You need to have Python installed on your machine.

Steps:

1. Clone or download the repository containing the code.
2. Navigate to the folder where the Python script is located.
3. Run the Python script using the following command:

python Lab_experiment7_gauravnegi.py

Expected Output:

When you run the script, it will perform a post-order traversal on the file system and print the deletion process for each file and folder:

Deleting file: file1
Deleting file: file2
Deleting folder: folder1
Deleting file: file3
Deleting folder: folder2
Deleting folder: Main
All files and folders have been deleted in the correct order.

This output indicates that the traversal correctly deletes the files first, followed by the folders.