Could you give an example of a function (recursive or not) that finds if a binary search tree is too tall?

How can I find using C if a binary search tree is too tall relatively fast (most of the time)?

To be more specific , lets say I need to find if a tree has a height of at least 10 ,without having to search the whole tree most of the time.

(This is possible because I expect most of the input to be binary search trees which have a heigh greater than 10.)

>Solution :

If there are no preconditions about the structure of the tree, there’s no other way but checking one side of the tree, then the other.

int check_depth(struct tree *root, int depth)
{
    if (!root) {
        return 0;
    } else if (depth <= 1) {
        return 1;
    } else {
        return check_depth(root->left,  depth-1) ||
               check_depth(root->right, depth-1);
    }
}