LeetCode235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree（C++）

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 p and q as the lowest node in T that has both p and q as descendants (where we allow a node to be a descendant of itself).”

Given binary search tree:  root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5]

 

Example 1:

Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 8
Output: 6
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2and 8 is 6.

Example 2:

Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 4
Output: 2
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

Note:

• All of the nodes' values will be unique.
• p and q are different and both values will exist in the BST.

解题思路：充分利用BST性质，判断p和q在左子树还是右子树，如果分别在左右子树，则该节点则为我们需要找的节点。

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        if(root == NULL)
            return NULL;
        if(root->val < p->val && root->val < q->val)
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right,p,q);
        else if(root->val > p->val && root->val > q->val)
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p,q);
        else 
            return root;
    }
};