988. Smallest String Starting From Leaf

题目描述

Given the root of a binary tree, each node has a value from 0 to 25 representing the letters ‘a’ to ‘z’: a value of 0 represents ‘a’, a value of 1 represents ‘b’, and so on.

Find the lexicographically smallest string that starts at a leaf of this tree and ends at the root.

(As a reminder, any shorter prefix of a string is lexicographically smaller: for example, “ab” is lexicographically smaller than “aba”. A leaf of a node is a node that has no children.)

题目链接

https://leetcode.com/problems/smallest-string-starting-from-leaf/

方法思路

class Solution {
    //Runtime: 4 ms, faster than 55.51%
    //Memory Usage: 38.7 MB, less than 5.17% 
    String ans = "~";
    public String smallestFromLeaf(TreeNode root) {
        dfs(root, new StringBuilder());
        return ans;
    }

    public void dfs(TreeNode node, StringBuilder sb) {
        if (node == null) return;
        sb.append((char)('a' + node.val));

        if (node.left == null && node.right == null) {
            sb.reverse();
            String S = sb.toString();
            sb.reverse();

            if (S.compareTo(ans) < 0)
                ans = S;
        }

        dfs(node.left, sb);
        dfs(node.right, sb);
        sb.deleteCharAt(sb.length() - 1);//回溯
    }
}