235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

题目：

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：

首先注意到题目中的树是平衡二叉树，它的特点就是，根节点的值大于其左子树中的所有值，且小于其右子树中的所有值。

根据平衡二叉树的特点并且举例不难发现，从根开始进行递归，不妨设p的值小于q，那么找到大于p且小于q的节点即可，特殊的情况就是p是q的根或者q是p的根。

代码：

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        //处理为空的情况
        if(root == null || p == null || q == null){
            return null;
        }
        //比较两个节点值的大小，small为值较小的结点
        TreeNode small, big;
        if(p.val == q.val){
            return p;
        }else if(p.val < q.val){
            small = p;
            big = q;
        }else{
            small = q;
            big = p;
        }
        
        //递归实现代码
        if(root.val >= small.val && root.val <= big.val){
            return root;
        }else if(root.val < small.val){
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, small, big);
        }else{
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, small, big);
        }
    }
}

【注】

在完成本题之后第一次关注了程序运行的时间和占用的空间，发现自己的程序挺慢的，discuss里的代码思路和我相似，但是代码比我的更简练。