leetcode 235 Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree 二叉搜索树的最小共同父节点

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.

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：

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;
    }
};

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;
    }
};