Q: Finding the height of a Ternary Tree using recursion? I'm trying to figure out how to get the max height of a ternary tree, for a school project. For binary trees using Math.max() is easy, but I was struggling on how to do the same thing with three children. Below is what I have so far, but I'm not at a point where I can compile yet and I'm not sure if my logic is sound. Will this work? Would would putting the left/right child comparison into a temp variable be better?
private int getHeight(TernaryNode<T> node) {
    int height = 0;

    if (node != null) {
        height = Math.max(getHeight(node.getLeftChild()), getHeight(node.getRightChild()));
        height = 1 + Math.max(height, getHeight(node.getMidChild()));
    }

    return height;


A: Yes, this will work. To make it slightly more readable, you could just write -
height = 1 + Math.max(
              Math.max(
                    getHeight(node.getLeftChild()),
                    getHeight(node.getMidChild())
              ),
              getHeight(node.getRightChild())
         )       

There is no need for an auxiliary variable.
