[Leetocde]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 allowa 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.

/**
 * 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:
    /*algorithm
     1)p and q is in separated child tree, root is their LCA
     2)p or q is root, return root
     3)recursive call lowestCommonAncestor
     further thoughts:
     1)p or q is not in the root tree, how about this?
     2)how about to handle this if either of root,p,q is NULL
     3)how about p and q is same node? return its parent, this seems reasonable

    */

//parent
TreeNode* parent(TreeNode* root,TreeNode* p){

   if(p == root)return NULL;
    if(root->right == p ||
       root->left == p)return root
    parent(root->left,p);
    parent(root->right,p);
}
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
            //handle case 2 root,p,or q is null
            if(!root || !p || !q)return NULL;
            //handle 3 case
            if(p == q)return parent(p);
         
            //handle 1 issue, p or q is not in the tree
            TreeNode* first,*last;
            first = root;
            while(first->left)first = first->left;
            last = root;
            while(last->right)last = last->right;
            if(first->val > p->val || first->val > q->val ||
               last->val < p->val || last->val < q->val)//not in the tree
               return NULL;
            //just consider normal condition
            if(root->val > p->val && root->val > q->val) //p and q in left child
                return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left,p,q);
            if(root->val < p->val && root->val < q->val) //p and q in right
                return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right,p,q);
            //otherwise , p and q one is in left, one is on right
            return root;
    }
}