Deletion Steps
Following are detailed steps for deletion.
1) Perform standard BST delete. When we perform standard delete
operation in BST, we always end up deleting a node which is an
either leaf or has only one child (For an internal node, we copy the
successor and then recursively call delete for successor, successor
is always a leaf node or a node with one child). So we only need to
handle cases where a node is leaf or has one child. Let v be the
node to be deleted and u be the child that replaces v (Note that u is
NULL when v is a leaf and color of NULL is considered as Black).
2) Simple Case: If either u or v is red, we mark the replaced
child as black (No change in black height). Note that both u and v
cannot be red as v is parent of u and two consecutive reds are not
allowed in red-black tree.
3) If Both u and v are Black.
3.1) Color u as double black. Now our task reduces to convert this
double black to single black. Note that If v is leaf, then u is NULL
and color of NULL is considered black. So the deletion of a black
leaf also causes a double black.
3.2) Do following while the current node u is double black, and it is
not the root. Let sibling of node be s.
….(a): If sibling s is black and at least one of sibling’s
children is red, perform rotation(s). Let the red child of s be r.
This case can be divided in four subcases depending upon positions
of s and r.
…………..(i) Left Left Case (s is left child of its parent and r is left
child of s or both children of s are red). This is mirror of right right
case shown in below diagram.
…………..(ii) Left Right Case (s is left child of its parent and r is
right child). This is mirror of right left case shown in below diagram.
…………..(iii) Right Right Case (s is right child of its parent and r is
right child of s or both children of s are red)
…………..(iv) Right Left Case (s is right child of its parent and r is
left child of s)
…..(b): If sibling is black and its both children are black,
perform recoloring, and recur for the parent if parent is black.
In this case, if parent was red, then we didn’t need to recur for
parent, we can simply make it black (red + double black = single
black)
…..(c): If sibling is red, perform a rotation to move old sibling up,
recolor the old sibling and parent. The new sibling is always black
(See the below diagram). This mainly converts the tree to black
sibling case (by rotation) and leads to case (a) or (b). This case can
be divided in two subcases.
…………..(i) Left Case (s is left child of its parent). This is mirror of
right right case shown in below diagram. We right rotate the parent
p.
…………..(ii) Right Case (s is right child of its parent). We left rotate
the parent p.
3.3) If u is root, make it single black and return (Black height of
complete tree reduces by 1).
The deletion operation in a red-black tree takes O(log n) time
on average, making it a good choice for searching and
deleting elements in large data sets.
