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.

这里要充分利用二叉搜索时的性质，经过分析可以分以下几种情况：

终止条件

1）根节点直接为NULL；

2）节点一个在左，一个在右，或到最后其中一个根本就是根节点本身。

递归过程

1）都在左子树中，需要在左子树中继续搜索公共祖先

2）都在右子树中，需要在右子树中继续搜索公共祖先

根据上述情况，可以写出下面的递归函数进行求解：

class Solution {
public:
    // 给定一棵二分搜索树，求两个节点的最近公共祖先
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        // 递归终止条件
        if (root == NULL || p == NULL || q == NULL) return NULL;

        // 找到公共祖先的情况
        if (p->val <= root->val && q->val >= root->val || p->val >= root->val && q->val <= root->val)
            return root;

        // 左子树中递归
        if (p->val < root->val && q->val < root->val)
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);

        // 右子树中递归
        if (p->val>root->val && q->val>root->val)
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p, q);
    }
};