Leetcode 230. Kth Smallest Element in a BST (Medium) (cpp)

Leetcode 230. Kth Smallest Element in a BST (Medium) (cpp)

Tag: Binary Search, Tree

Difficulty: Medium

/*

230. Kth Smallest Element in a BST (Medium)

Given a binary search tree, write a function kthSmallest to find the kth smallest element in it.

Note: 
You may assume k is always valid, 1 ≤ k ≤ BST's total elements.

Follow up:
What if the BST is modified (insert/delete operations) often and you need to find the kth smallest frequently? How would you optimize the kthSmallest routine?

Hint:

Try to utilize the property of a BST.
What if you could modify the BST node's structure?
The optimal runtime complexity is O(height of BST).

*/
/**
 * 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:
    int kthSmallest(TreeNode* root, int k) {
        vector<int> res;
        traversal(root, res);
        return res[k - 1];
    }
    void traversal(TreeNode* root, vector<int>& res) {
        if (root) {
            traversal(root -> left, res);
            res.push_back(root -> val);
            traversal(root -> right, res);
        }
    }
};
class Solution {
public:
    int kthSmallest(TreeNode* root, int k) {
        stack<TreeNode*> s;
        int cnt = 0, res = root -> val;
        while (true) {
            TreeNode* temp = root;
            while(temp) {
                s.push(temp);
                temp = temp -> left;
            }
            if (s.empty() || cnt == k) return res;
            cnt++;
            root = s.top();
            s.pop();
            res = root -> val;
            root = root -> right;
        }
        return res;
    }
};