binary trees in C programming?

You can try something like the following. It won't print it out exactly the way you want. I'll leave that for you to deal with as you need it. (It's simply not clear how to implement what you showed, in all cases.) But this should get things across as a starting approach.

#include <stdio.h>

#include <stdlib.h>

#include <ctype.h>

typedef struct tree tree;

typedef struct tree {

    unsigned int id;

    tree *left, *right;

} tree;

int match( const char **s, char c ) {

    if ( s == 0 || *s == 0 || **s != c ) return 0;

    ++*s;

    return 1;

}

int digit( const char **s ) {

    return match( s, '0' ) || match( s, '1' ) || match( s, '2' ) ||

        match( s, '3' ) || match( s, '4' ) || match( s, '5' ) ||

        match( s, '6' ) || match( s, '7' ) || match( s, '8' ) ||

        match( s, '9' );

}

tree * create( const char **s ) {

    char c;

    unsigned int value;

    tree *node, *left, *right;

    if ( s == 0 || *s == 0 ) return 0;

    if ( match( s, '*' ) ) return 0;

    if ( c= **s, !digit( s ) ) return 0;

    for ( value= c - '0'; c= **s, digit( s ); ) value= 10*value + c - '0';

    if ( !match( s, '(' ) ) return 0;

    left= create( s );

    if ( !match( s, ')' ) || !match( s, '(' ) ) return 0;

    right= create( s );

    if ( !match( s, ')' ) ) return 0;

    node= (tree *) malloc( sizeof( tree ) );

    node->id= value;

    node->left= left;

    node->right= right;

    return node;

}

void destroy( tree * t ) {

    if ( t == 0 ) return;

    destroy( t->left );

    destroy( t->right );

    free( t );

}

void print( tree * t, int tab ) {

    if ( t == 0 ) { printf( "%*s(%c)\n", tab, "", '*' ); return; }

    printf( "%*s%d\n", tab, "", t->id );

    print( t->left, tab+4 );

    print( t->right, tab+4 );

}

int main( int argc, char *argv[] ) {

    char *p= argv[1];

    tree *mytree= create( &p );

    if ( *p == '\0' ) {

        printf( "%s parsed correctly! Parse tree follows:\n", argv[1] );

        print( mytree, 0 );

    } else

        printf( "%s failed to parse correctly.\n", argv[1] );

    destroy( mytree );

    return 0;

}

EDIT: I added tree printing code for you. See link below:

Hey Jonathan,

Very interesting approach, I tried to get my head around it, Can you explain what have you done a bit,please?

thanks,