Minimum Depth of Binary Tree

Given a binary tree, find its minimum depth.

The minimum depth is the number of nodes along the shortest path from the root node down to the nearest leaf node.

Have you met this question in a real interview? 

Yes

Example

Given a binary tree as follow:

  1
 / \ 
2   3
   / \
  4   5

The minimum depth is 2.

因为该题目需要记录到叶子节点的最短的距离，因此在使用分治的方法进行计算时，在设定初始的左子树、右子树的长度的时候，需要将数据

设定为最大值。这是这个题目处理时的一个小技巧。

java

/**
 * Definition of TreeNode:
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     public int val;
 *     public TreeNode left, right;
 *     public TreeNode(int val) {
 *         this.val = val;
 *         this.left = this.right = null;
 *     }
 * }
 */


public class Solution {
    /*
     * @param root: The root of binary tree
     * @return: An integer
     */
    public int minDepth(TreeNode root) {
        // write your code here
        if (root == null) {
            return 0;
        }
        return findMin(root);
    }
    private int findMin(TreeNode root) {
        if (root.left == null && root.right == null) {
            return 1;
        }
        int left = Integer.MAX_VALUE, right = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
        if (root.left != null) {
            left = findMin(root.left);
        }
        if (root.right != null) {
            right = findMin(root.right);
        }
        return Math.min(left, right) + 1;
    }
}