Leetcode 235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree (Easy) (cpp)

Leetcode 235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree (Easy) (cpp)

Tag: Tree

Difficulty: Easy

/*

235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree (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.

*/
/**
 * 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 (min(p -> val, q -> val) < root -> val && max(p -> val, q -> val) > root -> val)
 			return root;
 		else if (root -> val < min(p -> val, q -> val))
 			return lowestCommonAncestor(root -> right, p, q);
 		else if (root -> val > max(p -> val, q -> val))
 			return lowestCommonAncestor(root -> left, p, q);
 		else
 			return root;
 	}
 };