LeetCode #235 - Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree Easy

Problem

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).”

Example

        _______6______
       /              \
    ___2__          ___8__
   /      \        /      \
   0       4       7       9
          /  \
          3   5

---

Algorithm

整理一下题意：求两个节点p和q的最小祖先。最小祖先的定义是，使得子树包含p和q两个节点的最低节点。

由于已知这棵树是二叉搜索树，所以有左子<父<右子。因此，若当前节点的值比p和q的值都大，则转到当前节点的左子继续递归；当前节点的值比p和q的值都小，则转到当前节点的右子继续递归；除以上两种情况外，其余情况的最小祖先都是当前节点，直接返回即可。

代码如下。

//递归版本，用时42ms
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;
    }
};