traversal

traverse (ˈtrævɜːs, trəˈvɜːs)
—vb
1.	to pass or go over or back and forth over (something); cross
2.	(tr) to go against; oppose; obstruct
3.	to move or cause to move sideways or crosswise
4.	(tr) to extend or reach across
5.	to turn (an artillery gun) laterally on its pivot or mount or (of an artillery gun) to turn laterally
6.	(tr) to look over or examine carefully
7.	(tr) law to deny (an allegation of fact), as in pleading
8.	(intr) fencing to slide one's blade towards an opponent's hilt while applying pressure against his blade
9.	mountaineering to move across (a face) horizontally
10.	(tr) nautical to brace (a yard) fore and aft
—n
11.	something being or lying across, such as a transom
12.	a gallery or loft inside a building that crosses it
13.	maths another name for transversal
14.	an obstruction or hindrance
15.	fortifications a protective bank or other barrier across a trench or rampart
16.	a railing, screen, or curtain
17.	the act or an instance of traversing or crossing
18.	a path or road across
19.	nautical the zigzag course of a vessel tacking frequently
20.	law the formal denial of a fact alleged in the opposite party's pleading
21.	surveying a survey consisting of a series of straight lines, the length of each and the angle between them being measured
22.	mountaineering a horizontal move across a face
—adj
23.	being or lying across; transverse
—adv
24.	an archaic word for across
[C14: from Old French traverser, from Late Latin trānsversāre, from Latin trānsversustransverse]
'traversable
—adj
tra'versal
—n
'traverser
—n

traverse

a bridge, etc." is recorded from 1347; meaning "a passage by which one may traverse" is recorded from 1670s. Military foritifcation sense of "barrier, barricade" is recorded from 1590s.

traversal definition

data
Processing nodes in a graph one at a time, usually in some specified order. Traversal of a tree is recursively defined to mean visiting the root node and traversing its children. Visiting a node usually involves transforming it in some way or collecting data from it.
In "pre-order traversal", a node is visited __before__ its children. In "post-order" traversal, a node is visited __after__ its children. The more rarely used "in-order" traversal is generally applicable only to binary trees, and is where you visit first a node's left child, then the node itself, and then its right child.
For the binary tree:
T / \ I S / \ D E
A pre-order traversal visits the nodes in the order T I D E S. A post-order traversal visits them in the order D E I S T. An in-order traversal visits them in the order D I E T S.
(2001-10-01)