Finding elements in a general tree

Question

I am writing a method to find elements in a general tree structure. The structure has a root and each parent node has 0-10 children, whose nodes are stored in an array linked to the parent node. The node class for the tree has a variable info that stores Comparable information. It has a variable numbChildren for the number of children that node has. It also has an array of size 10 containing links to up to 10 child tree nodes. Methods in the node class are getter and setters for child nodes. For example, if a parent node has 5 children, you can access the 3 child of that parent by doing parent.getChild(3-1); There are also getters and setters for the info of the node.
My problem is I have a general tree structure made of the nodes described above, and I need to search that tree to find a given element and return a reference to the node containing the element if it is found. Can someone help give me ideas about how I can search the tree? Just to clarify, a general tree structure is a structure where parent nodes can have any number of children (but in this case there are a max of 10 children allowed.
thanks for any help

Answer 1

For any given node, you check to see if the given node contains the item you're searching for. If not, you check the appropriate child node (since the child nodes are ordered, you should only have to check one). This is called recursion, and your class probably covered it if they gave you this assignment. Start at the root.