Constructing a balanced Binary Search Tree from a sorted List in O(N) time

This post discusses a O(n) algorithm that construct a balanced binary search tree (BST) from a sorted list. For instance, consider that we are given a sorted list: [1,2,3,4,5,6,7]. We have to construct a balanced BST  as follows.

4 | 2        6 |        | 1   3   5     7

To do so, we use the following definition of Tree, described in Scala By Example book.

abstract class IntSetcase object Empty extends IntSetcase class NonEmpty(elem: Int, left: IntSet, right: IntSet) extends IntSet

One straight-forward approach would be to repeatedly perform binary search on the given list to find the median of the list, and then, to construct a balanced BST recursively. Complexity of such approach is O(nlogn), where n is the number of elements in the given list.

A better algorithm constructs balanced BST while iterating the list only once. It begins with the leaf nodes and construct the tree in a bottom-up manner. As such, it avoids repeated binary searches and achieves better runtime complexity (i.e., O(n), where n is the total number of elements in the given list). Following Scala code outlines this algorithm, which effectively converts a list ls to an IntSet, a balanced BST:

[gist]5555987[/gist]

Any comment or query regarding this post is highly appreciated. Thanks.