235/236. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree/Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

235 Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

 

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.

 

这道题让我们求二叉搜索树的最小共同父节点, LeetCode中关于BST的题有Validate Binary Search Tree 验证二叉搜索树， Recover Binary Search Tree 复原二叉搜索树， Binary Search Tree Iterator 二叉搜索树迭代器， Unique Binary Search Trees 独一无二的二叉搜索树， Unique Binary Search Trees II 独一无二的二叉搜索树之二，Convert Sorted Array to Binary Search Tree 将有序数组转为二叉搜索树 , Convert Sorted List to Binary Search Tree 将有序链表转为二叉搜索树 和 Kth Smallest Element in a BST 二叉搜索树中的第K小的元素。这道题我们可以用递归来求解，我们首先来看题目中给的例子，由于二叉搜索树的特点是左<根<右，所以根节点的值一直都是中间值，大于左子树的所有节点值，小于右子树的所有节点值，那么我们可以做如下的判断，如果根节点的值大于p和q之间的较大值，说明p和q都在左子树中，那么此时我们就进入根节点的左子节点继续递归，如果根节点小于p和q之间的较小值，说明p和q都在右子树中，那么此时我们就进入根节点的右子节点继续递归，如果都不是，则说明当前根节点就是最小共同父节点，直接返回即可，参见代码如下：

 

解法一：

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        if (!root) return NULL;
        if (root->val > max(p->val, q->val)) 
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
        else if (root->val < min(p->val, q->val)) 
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p, q);
        else return root;
    }
};

 

当然，此题也有非递归的写法，用个while循环来代替递归调用即可，然后不停的更新当前的根节点，也能实现同样的效果，代码如下：

 

解法二：

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        while (true) {
            if (root->val > max(p->val, q->val)) root = root->left;
            else if (root->val < min(p->val, q->val)) root = root->right;
            else break;
        }      
        return root;
    }
};

 

LeetCode All in One 题目讲解汇总(持续更新中…)

236 Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

 

Given a binary tree, find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of two given nodes in the tree.

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).”

        _______3______
       /              \
    ___5__          ___1__
   /      \        /      \
   6      _2       0       8
         /  \
         7   4

For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 5 and 1 is 3. Another example is LCA of nodes 5 and 4 is 5, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

 

这道求二叉树的最小共同父节点的题是之前那道Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree 二叉搜索树的最小共同父节点的Follow Up。跟之前那题不同的地方是，这道题是普通是二叉树，不是二叉搜索树，所以就不能利用其特有的性质，所以我们只能在二叉树中来搜索p和q，然后从路径中找到最后一个相同的节点即为父节点，我们可以用递归来实现，写法很简洁，代码如下：

 

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
       if (!root || p == root || q == root) return root;
       TreeNode *left = lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
       TreeNode *right = lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p , q);
       if (left && right) return root;
       return left ? left : right;
    }
};

 

上述代码可以进行优化一下，在找完左子树的共同父节点时如果结果存在，且不是p或q，那么不用再找右子树了，直接返回这个结果即可，同理，对找完右子树的结果做同样处理，参见代码如下：

 

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
       if (!root || p == root || q == root) return root;
       TreeNode *left = lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
       if (left && left != p && left != q) return left;
       TreeNode *right = lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p , q);
       if (right && right != p && right != q) return right;
       if (left && right) return root;
       return left ? left : right;
    }
};

 

此题还有一种情况，题目中没有明确说明p和q是否是树中的节点，如果不是，应该返回NULL，而上面的方法就不正确了，对于这种情况请参见 Cracking the Coding Interview 5th Edition 的第233-234页。

 

LeetCode All in One 题目讲解汇总(持续更新中…)