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.
* public class TreeNode {
* int val;
* TreeNode left;
* TreeNode right;
* TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
* }
*/
public class Solution {
public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode node, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
if(node == null) {
return null;
}
if(node == p || node == q) {
return node;
}
TreeNode leftAncestor = lowestCommonAncestor(node.left, p, q);
TreeNode rightAncestor = lowestCommonAncestor(node.right, p, q);
if(leftAncestor != null && rightAncestor != null) {
return node;
}
return leftAncestor == null? rightAncestor:leftAncestor;
}
}