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Joined 2026-09-21 Message
Incoming links: Lazy breadth-first traversal with child iterators
Keep a FIFO queue of pending child iterators, ordered by the breadth-first order of their parents. Defer even the call creating a node's children until that iterator reaches the front and is needed:
def breadthFirst[T](node: Node[T]): Iter[Node[T]] = {
def childrenLater(n: Node[T]): Iter[Node[T]] = new Iter[Node[T]] {
private lazy val children = n.children()
def hasNext: Boolean = children.hasNext
def next(): Node[T] = {
require(children.hasNext, "empty child iterator")
children.next()
}
}
val pending = scala.collection.mutable.Queue.empty[Iter[Node[T]]]
pending.enqueue(childrenLater(node))
new Iter[Node[T]] {
private def normalize(): Unit = {
while (pending.nonEmpty && !pending.head.hasNext) pending.dequeue()
}
def hasNext: Boolean = {
normalize()
pending.nonEmpty
}
def next(): Node[T] = {
normalize()
require(pending.nonEmpty, "no more descendants")
val answer = pending.head.next()
pending.enqueue(childrenLater(answer))
answer
}
}
}Here “descendants” excludes the supplied root: the first output is its first child. A self-inclusive convention can prepend
unitIter(node) without changing the traversal logic. The queue invariant says its iterators enumerate the still-unreported children of already encountered parents, in parent breadth-first order. Consuming one child appends that child's deferred iterator after all earlier parents' pending children. Exhausted child iterators contribute nothing and can be discarded. This proves increasing depth and sibling order without constructing a complete level in advance.This lazy breadth-first traversal with child iterators never eagerly materializes all children or the whole tree. A finite prefix can therefore be traversed on a genuinely infinite tree. As with any strict breadth-first ordering, an infinite earlier level prevents reaching a deeper level; no algorithm can place a deeper node after every member of an infinite earlier level at a finite output position. For a locally finite tree, every finite-depth level is finite and each descendant is eventually reached, assuming the underlying iterator operations terminate. Fresh child iterators and exclusive ownership of consumed iterator states are essential to this argument.