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.
/**
* Definition for a binary tree node.
* struct TreeNode {
* int val;
* struct TreeNode *left;
* struct TreeNode *right;
* };
*/
struct TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(struct TreeNode* root, struct TreeNode* p, struct TreeNode* q) {
if((p->val-root->val)*(q->val-root->val)<=0) return root;
else if(p->val-root->val<0) return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
else return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p, q);
}
BST二叉搜索树,左小右大,两个树叶分别在根节点两边返回根节点即可,否则递归寻找下一层。