leetcode 543. Diameter of Binary Tree（二叉树的直径）

Given a binary tree, you need to compute the length of the diameter of the tree. The diameter of a binary tree is the length of the longest path between any two nodes in a tree. This path may or may not pass through the root.

Example:
Given a binary tree

  1
 / \
2   3
   / \   
  4   5  

Return 3, which is the length of the path [4,2,1,3] or [5,2,1,3].

Note: The length of path between two nodes is represented by the number of edges between them.

给出二叉树，计算两个node之间最长的path，可以不经过root。两个node之间的path是指两个node之间有多少条边。相邻的俩node即可组成一条边。

思路：
要计算path的长就要知道一条path上有多少个点。假设有一节点node，那经过node的点个数为左子树中较高的一条分支的点数+右子树中较高的一条分支的点数+node本身
而较高的分支可以通过求树的height来确定

left代表左子树的高度，right代表右子树的高度
那么node处的height = max(left, right) + 1

需要记录的path长度，可以先记录path上有多少个点，最后用点的个数减去1即可。点的个数=left + right + 1，注意点数是把左右子树的高度都加上，而算height的时候左右子树取较大。

class Solution {
    int result = 1;
    public int diameterOfBinaryTree(TreeNode root) {
        height(root);
        return result-1;
    }
    
    int height(TreeNode root) {
        if(root == null) return 0;
        int left = height(root.left);
        int right = height(root.right);
        result = Math.max(result, left+right+1);
        return Math.max(left, right) + 1;
    }
}