LeetCode解题分享：684. Redundant Connection

Problem

In this problem, a tree is an undirected graph that is connected and has no cycles.

The given input is a graph that started as a tree with N nodes (with distinct values 1, 2, …, N), with one additional edge added. The added edge has two different vertices chosen from 1 to N, and was not an edge that already existed.

The resulting graph is given as a 2D-array of edges. Each element of edges is a pair [u, v] with u < v, that represents an undirected edge connecting nodes u and v.

Return an edge that can be removed so that the resulting graph is a tree of N nodes. If there are multiple answers, return the answer that occurs last in the given 2D-array. The answer edge [u, v] should be in the same format, with u < v.

Example 1:

Input: [[1,2], [1,3], [2,3]]
Output: [2,3]
Explanation: The given undirected graph will be like this:
  1
  / \
 2 - 3

Example 2:

Input: [[1,2], [2,3], [3,4], [1,4], [1,5]]
Output: [1,4]
Explanation: The given undirected graph will be like this:
5 - 1 - 2
  |   |
  4 - 3

Note:

1. The size of the input 2D-array will be between 3 and 1000.
2. Every integer represented in the 2D-array will be between 1 and N, where N is the
   size of the input array.

解题思路

   这一题一开始可以考虑一次从每一个结点出发，并将其作为根节点，然后依次遍历每一条边，判断边的节点是不是都在树中，如果都在树中，则返回就好。这种方法直观，但是时间复杂度太高，不实用。因此这里我们考虑使用并查集的方法。

  我们使用一个数组来保存每一个节点的直接相连的父节点，开始时每一个节点都是自己的父节点，然后遍历给出的每一条边，对每一个边的端点，一直在数组中回溯查找该端点的根节点，如果这两个端点的对应的根节点相同，说明，这两个端点处在同一棵树中，反之则不在同一棵树中。当不在同一棵树中时，将其中一棵树的根节点指向另一棵树的根节点，相当于将两棵树合并成了一棵树。

   代码如下：

class Solution:
    def findRedundantConnection(self, edges) -> list:
        parent = [i for i in range(len(edges) + 1)]
        for s, e in edges:
            root1, dis1 = self.get_root(parent, s)
            root2, dis2 = self.get_root(parent, e)

            if root1 == root2:
                return [s, e]

            if dis1 < dis2:
                parent[root1] = root2
            else:
                parent[root2] = root1

    def get_root(self, parent, node):
        """
        :param parent:
        :param node:
        :return: root and distance
        """
        dis = 0
        while parent[node] != node:
            node = parent[node]
            dis += 1
        return node, dis
        

   $get\_root$函数用于计算节点的根节点，并返回两个数值，第一个数值表示根节点的编号，第二个数值表示节点到根节点的距离。当两个端点所对应的树不同时，我们判断节点的距离，并将距离短的作为距离长的的一棵子树，这样可以优化树的结构，不至于树深度过大。