Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree 二叉树的公共祖先

Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

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.

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * struct TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode *left;
 *     TreeNode *right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) : val(x), left(NULL), right(NULL) {}
 * };
 */
class Solution {
public:
//如果是二叉搜索树，可以根据节点的大小规律查找
//如果普通的二叉树，采用递归，查找
//节p与q的公共祖先c一定满足：p与q分别出现在c的左右子树上（如果p或者q本身不是祖先）
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        
        if(root==NULL)
            return NULL;
        if(root==p || root==q)
            return root;
        
        TreeNode *left=lowestCommonAncestor(root->left,p,q);
        TreeNode *right=lowestCommonAncestor(root->right,p,q);
        if(left && right)//分别在左右子树
            return root;
        return left?left:right;
    }
};