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 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.

Tags

Tree

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Pay attention to the binary search tree condition

var lowestCommonAncestor = function (root, p, q) {
    if ((root.val - p.val) * (root.val - q.val) <= 0) {
        return root;
    } else 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);
    }
};