Leetcode 230. Kth Smallest Element in a BST

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.

method 1

树的问题一般即树的遍历问题，考虑前序、中序、后序和层序
根据题目意思，可以从小到大遍历二叉树，那么得到便是一串从小到大的序列，第k个即为所求，所以使用中序，并使用一个数组存储

void inOrder(TreeNode* root, int k, vector<int> vals){
	if (!root) return;

	inOrder(root->left, k, vals);
	vals.push_back(root->val);
	inOrder(root->right, k, vals);
}

int kthSmallest(TreeNode* root, int k) {
	vector<int> vals;
	inOrder(root, k, vals);
	return vals[k-1];
}

method 2

同样的思想，不过借助一个stack实现迭代（非递归）的方法

class Solution {
  public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
    LinkedList<TreeNode> stack = new LinkedList<TreeNode>();

    while (true) {
      while (root != null) {
        stack.add(root);
        root = root.left;
      }
      root = stack.removeLast();
      if (--k == 0) return root.val;
      root = root.right;
    }
  }
}

summary

1. 树的问题一般可以归纳为树的遍历顺序问题！