235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

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 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).”

        _______6______
       /              \
    ___2__          ___8__
   /      \        /      \
   0      _4       7       9
         /  \
         3   5

For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 2 and 8 is 6. Another example is LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

二叉查找树比二叉树容易一些，因为数值有序，所以可以选定查找方向，当p和q的值都在左子树就返回左子树，当p和q的值都在右子树就返回右子树的查找结果， 如果不是就说明在当前root的两支上，或者当前root的值就是p或q的值，直接返回root。

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