[leetcode]235. 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.

找最近的公共父节点

我们可以发现，如果pq都小于root，则公共节点在左子树。如果pq大于root，则公共祖先在右子树。如果一大一小，则root就是公共祖先。

可以使用遍历的方法：

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        if(root==null){
            return null;
        }
        int max=Math.max(p.val,q.val);
        int min=Math.min(p.val,q.val);
        if(max<root.val){
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left,p,q); 
        }else if(min>root.val){
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right,p,q); 
        }
        else{
            return root;
        }
    }
}