LeetCode 114. Flatten Binary Tree to Linked List - 链表（Linked List）系列题22

Given the root of a binary tree, flatten the tree into a "linked list":

• The "linked list" should use the same TreeNode class where the right child pointer points to the next node in the list and the left child pointer is always null.
• The "linked list" should be in the same order as a pre-order traversal of the binary tree.

Example 1:

Input: root = [1,2,5,3,4,null,6]
Output: [1,null,2,null,3,null,4,null,5,null,6]

Example 2:

Input: root = []
Output: []

Example 3:

Input: root = [0]
Output: [0]

Constraints:

• The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [0, 2000].
• -100 <= Node.val <= 100

Follow up: Can you flatten the tree in-place (with O(1) extra space)?

题目要求把一棵二叉树转换成以根节点为头节点的链表，但是不能新创链表节点，要仍然以二叉树的节点为链表的节点，即二叉树节点的右子节点为链表节点的next，二叉树节点的左子节点指向空。另外还要求链表的节点顺序是按照二叉树前序遍历的顺序。

既然要求是二叉树前序遍历的顺序，那就按照前序遍历算法来按顺序处理每个节点，有递归和迭代两种方法。前序遍历算法可参考105. Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal。

递归法：前序遍历的顺序是先根节点，再左子树和右子树。如果左子树和右子树都已经被转换成了链表，那就把根节点与左子链表相连，再与右子链表相连就构成了一个完整的链表。这种思路用递归法来实现最简单直观。

实现一个递归函数，输入是根节点，输出是转换成链表后的头节点和尾节点，递归终止条件是当输入的根节点为空。根节点就是链表的头节点，分别递归处理左子树和右子树，分别返回的是左子树链表的头尾节点和右子树链表的头尾节点，然后链接根节点和两个链表，根节点的left指向空，right指向左子树链表头。在处理时需要注意判断左子树链表是否为空，如果为空，则根节点right指向右子树链表头。

# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode:
#     def __init__(self, val=0, left=None, right=None):
#         self.val = val
#         self.left = left
#         self.right = right
class Solution:
    def flatten(self, root: Optional[TreeNode]) -> None:
        """
        Do not return anything, modify root in-place instead.
        """
        self.helper(root)
        
    def helper(self, root):
        if not root:
            return None, None
        
        lhead, ltail = self.helper(root.left)
        rhead, rtail = self.helper(root.right)
        
        root.left = None
        end = root
        if lhead:
            end.right = lhead
            end = ltail
        if rhead:
            end.right = rhead
            end = rtail
        
        return root, end