Hello Codeforces, We all learn push()/push_down() function when studying Lazy Segment Trees. It's the engine that propagates the changes stored on a node to its children. This ensures that before we recurse deeper, the children of the current node are updated with any pending changes, guaranteeing we always work with consistent data. I was just studying Lazy Segment Trees and a fundamental question came to my mind. Is it possible to continue in Lazy trees without this push() function? I tried some variations of problems where we use Lazy Propagation with push() function, and tried to solve and find approaches on paper pen and I was able to find way to solve problems without push() function. I discussed with my peers an faculty if they can prove me wrong in those solutions and can provide some variation where we strictly need push() function with lazy tree. I am listing some variations below and their standard approaches of lazy tree with push() function and my approach of lazy tree without push() function.
Range Update Point Query
The problem is to add val in range [l, r] and query some index pos.
Range Update Range Query
The problem is to add val in range [l, r]and in query-1 and answer the sum in range [l, r] in query-2.
Adding on Segments, Querying on Maximum
The problem is to add val in range [l, r] in query-1 and answer the max_value in range [l, r] in query-2.
Range Assignment, Point Query
The problem is to assign val to all indices in range [l, r] in query-1 and answer some index pos in query-2.
There are many other variations, but covering them all would make this blog post too long. So, I'll end with a question: Is the push() function a necessity in a lazy segment tree, or is it just a way to keep the code clean?
Yo! Tadaa!







