Leetcode 235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

Total Accepted: 77021 Total Submissions: 205265 Difficulty: Easy

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 v and w as the lowest node in T that has both v and w as descendants (where we allow a node to be a descendant of itself).”

_______6______
       /              
    ___2__          ___8__
   /              /      
   0      _4       7       9
         /  
         3   5

For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 2 and 8 is 6. Another example is LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

思路：

二叉排序树(Binary Sort Tree)又称二叉查找(搜索)树(Binary Search Tree)。其定义为：二叉排序树或者是空树，或者是满足如下性质的二叉树：

①若它的左子树非空，则左子树上所有结点的值均小于根结点的值；

②若它的右子树非空，则右子树上所有结点的值均大于根结点的值；

③左、右子树本身又各是一棵二叉排序树。

代码：
迭代：

/**
 * 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) {
        while(true){
            if(root->val>p->val&&root->val>q->val){
                root=root->left;
                continue;
            }
            if(root->val<p->val&&root->val<q->val){
                root=root->right;
                continue;
            }
            return root;
        }
    }
};

递归：

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        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;
    }
};

还有另外1题，和这题相似：Leetcode 236. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree