[LeetCode] 236. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

题目：

Given a binary tree, find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of two given nodes in the tree.

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).”

        _______3______
       /              \
    ___5__          ___1__
   /      \        /      \
   6      _2       0       8
         /  \
         7   4

For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 5 and 1 is 3. Another example is LCA of nodes 5 and 4 is 5, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

答案：

思路：

这题是在235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree之上做的变种，现在是要求在任意的二叉树中进行查找，题目的难度瞬间从easy升到了medium。但是其实基本的思想是和原来一样的，即需要判断两个节点相对根节点是在同侧还是两侧。下面给出一种思路：

假设给出的两个节点是p和q，如果根节点root是p或者q，那么LCA就是root。

但是这个是对于整个树的root而言，考虑左子树，如果根节点（也就是root.left）是p或q，那么这个存在两种情况：

1. 另外一个节点在右子树中，那么root就是我们要求的LCA；

2. 另外一个节点不在右子树中，那么root.left就是我们要求的LCA。

同样的结论对于右子数也成立。

按照这样的思路递归求解就可以找到答案

参考代码：

/**
 * 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 || root == p || root == q) return root;
        TreeNode left = lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        TreeNode right = lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
        return left != null ? (right != null ? root : left) : right;   
    }
}