【Leetcode】Find the kth in the BST

【题目】

Given a binary search tree, write a function kthSmallest to find the kth smallest element in it.

Note: 
You may assume k is always valid, 1 ≤ k ≤ BST's total elements.

Follow up:
What if the BST is modified (insert/delete operations) often and you need to find the kth smallest frequently? How would you optimize the kthSmallest routine?

Hint:

1. Try to utilize the property of a BST.

【思路】

BST的特点就是排序性，左边的节点一定比root小，右边的节点一定比root大。

另外就是二分性。

找第k个，可以先看左边树节点的个数，小于k的话，就保证了肯定是在右边。那么去找右边的k-left.

k - left,就变成了新的k.

数root所在的树的节点数。这个就是用递归实现。想法就是，如果root自己本身就是null,那么就return 0; 否则至少+1，是自己，然后 自己+ 左孩子的数目 + 右孩子的数目！

【代码】

三种方法！！也是大神阿~

Binary search:

public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
        int count = countNodes(root.left);
        if (k <= count) {
            return kthSmallest(root.left, k);
        <span style="background-color: rgb(255, 255, 102);">} else if (k > count + 1) {
            return kthSmallest(root.right, k-1-count); // 1 is counted as current node</span>
        }

        return root.val;
    }

    public int countNodes(TreeNode n) {
        if (n == null) return 0;

        return 1 + countNodes(n.left) + countNodes(n.right);
    }

DFS：

  // better keep these two variables in a wrapper class
    private static int number = 0;
    private static int count = 0;

    public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
        count = k;
        helper(root);
        return number;
    }

    public void helper(TreeNode n) {
        if (n.left != null) helper(n.left);
        count--;
        if (count == 0) {
            number = n.val;
            return;
        }
        if (n.right != null) helper(n.right);
    }

BFS :

 public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
        Stack<TreeNode> st = new Stack<>();

        while (root != null) {
            st.push(root);
            root = root.left;
        }

        while (k != 0) {
            TreeNode n = st.pop();
            k--;
            if (k == 0) return n.val;
            TreeNode right = n.right;
            while (right != null) {
                st.push(right);
                right = right.left;
            }
        }

        return -1; // never hit if k is valid
  }