Tree java how to find a word

Question

I am trying to read a node that will find the longest word in a tree.

My method is public static int word(Node d). So how would I have to find the length of that node? Would I just use the string that was made in the class? The class I would use initializes a boolean, String: theWord and children. Here is what I got:

int newWord = 0;
int word = d.theWord.length();
if (d.isWord) {
    if (word > newWord) {
        newWord = word;
        return longestWord((DTN) d.children);
    } else {
        return longestWord((DTN) d.children);
    }
}
return newWord;

Answer 1

That's not really enough information to go on, but I'll take a shot in the dark anyway

public static int longest(Node d) {
  if (d == null) return 0;
  else return Math.max(longest(d.left), longest(d.right)) + 1;
}

Answer 2

Okay, there's a little more information. I'm still not at all clear on what's going on here, but here's another stab at what I think is basically what you might want:

String longestWord(Node d) {
  String result = d.theWord;
  for (Node c : d.children) {
     String w = longestWord(c);
     if (result.length < w.length) result = w;
  }
  return result;
}

This assumes d.children is some collection of Nodes.