Leetcode 235 Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

Leetcode 235 Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

题目描述

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 2 and 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.

来源：力扣（LeetCode）
链接：https://leetcode-cn.com/problems/lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-search-tree
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思路解析

• 二叉搜索树的定义：

  二叉搜索树中任意结点的关键字大于其左子树结点的关键字，小于其右子树结点的关键字，且左右子树也为二叉搜索树

依据二叉搜索树的定义我们可以利用p、q的值来确定他们的位置。

1. 如果$p、q$ 分别在当前结点的左右子树上，或$p、q$具有祖先与子孙的关系，那么其LCA即为当前结点
2. 如果$p、q$ 在当前结点的左子树上，那么其LCA在以当前结点的左子树上
3. 如果$p、q$ 在当前结点的右子树上，那么其LCA在以当前结点的右子树上

代码如下：

# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode(object):
#     def __init__(self, x):
#         self.val = x
#         self.left = None
#         self.right = None

class Solution(object):
    def lowestCommonAncestor(self, root, p, q):
        """
        :type root: TreeNode
        :type p: TreeNode
        :type q: TreeNode
        :rtype: TreeNode
        """
        if root is None:
            return None
        while True:
            if q.val < root.val and p.val < root.val:
               root = root.left
            elif q.val > root.val and p.val > root.val:
                root = root.right
            else:
                return root

时间复杂度最坏为$O(N)$，空间复杂度为$O(1)$

也可改写为递归形式，但不提倡