leetcode 235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree(二叉搜索树的最小公共祖先)

问题描述：

  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).”

  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：

  由于给出的树是二叉搜索树，其左子树的结点值都小于根结点值，所有右子树的结点值都大于根结点值。利用这个性质，如果给出的两个结点值都大于根结点值，则结果存在于右子树中；如果给出的两个结点值都小玉根结点值，则结果在左子数中；若一大一小，则根结点即为所求结果。

代码：

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        if(root == null) return root;
        if(p.val == root.val || q.val == root.val) return root;
        if(root.val > p.val && root.val > q.val)
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        else if(root.val < p.val && root.val < q.val)
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
        else
            return root;
    }
}