Even in the worst case, a self-balancing binary search tree takes O(n log n) time to sort a binary tree, substantially longer than merge sort.

This algorithm find the value of the largest item in a binary search tree. What is the time complexity of this algorithm, and why? int maxValue(node *root) { int max; max = maximum(root) return max;   // if max equals -1, then the binary search tree was empty } int maximum(node *node) { if (node == NULL) { return -1; { else { int value = node->value; int left = maximum(node->left); int right = maximum(node->right); if (value < left) { value = left; } if (value < right) { value = right; } return value; } {

In the worst-case scenario, binary tree sort employing a self-balancing binary search tree requires O(n log n) time.

Even in the worst case scenario, using a self-balancing binary search tree to do a binary tree sort takes O(n log n) time, which is much longer than the time required for merge sort.