How do I print out a tree structure?

Question

I'm trying to improve performance in our app. I've got performance information in the form of a tree of calls, with the following node class:

public class Node {     public string Name; // method name     public decimal Time; // time spent in method     public List<Node> Children; } 

I want to print out the tree such that I can see lines between the nodes - something like in this question. What's an algorithm I can use in C# for doing that?

Edit: Obviously I need to use recursion - but my attempts keep putting the lines in the wrong places. What I'm asking for is a specific algorithm that will print the tree in a nice manner - the details of when to print a vertical line and when to print a horizontal one.

Edit: It isn't sufficient just to use copies of a string to indent the nodes. I'm not looking for

A |-B |-|-C |-|-D |-|-|-E |-F |-|-G 

it has to be

A +-B | +-C | +-D |   +-E +-F   +-G 

or anything similar, so long as the tree structure is visible. Notice that C and D are indented differently to G - I can't just use a repeated string to indent the nodes.

Answer 1

The trick is to pass a string as the indent and to treat the last child specially:

class Node {        public void PrintPretty(string indent, bool last)    {        Console.Write(indent);        if (last)        {            Console.Write("\\-");            indent += "  ";        }        else        {            Console.Write("|-");            indent += "| ";        }        Console.WriteLine(Name);         for (int i = 0; i < Children.Count; i++)            Children[i].PrintPretty(indent, i == Children.Count - 1);    } } 

If called like this:

root.PrintPretty("", true); 

will output in this style:

\-root   \-child     |-child     \-child       |-child       |-child       \-child         |-child         |-child         | |-child         | \-child         |   |-child         |   |-child         |   |-child         |   \-child         |     \-child         |       \-child         \-child           |-child           |-child           |-child           | \-child           \-child             \-child