Lowest Common Ancestor Of A Binary Search Tree Problem
Description
LeetCode Problem 235.
Given a binary search tree (BST), find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of two given nodes in the BST.
According to the definition of LCA on Wikipedia: “The lowest common ancestor is defined between two nodes p and q as the lowest node in T that has both p and q as descendants (where we allow a node to be a descendant of itself).”
Example 1:
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Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 8
Output: 6
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 8 is 6.
Example 2:
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Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 4
Output: 2
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.
Example 3:
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Input: root = [2,1], p = 2, q = 1
Output: 2
Constraints:
- The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [2, 10^5].
- -10^9 <= Node.val <= 10^9
- All Node.val are unique.
- p != q
- p and q will exist in the BST.
Sample C++ Code
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/**
* Definition for a binary tree node.
* struct TreeNode {
* int val;
* TreeNode *left;
* TreeNode *right;
* TreeNode(int x) : val(x), left(NULL), right(NULL) {}
* };
*/
class Solution {
public:
TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
if (root == NULL)
return NULL;
if (root->val > p->val && root->val > q->val)
return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
if (root->val < p->val && root->val < q->val)
return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p, q);
return root;
}
};