1372. Longest ZigZag Path in a Binary Tree

Given a binary tree root, a ZigZag path for a binary tree is defined as follow:

• Choose any node in the binary tree and a direction (right or left).
• If the current direction is right then move to the right child of the current node otherwise move to the left child.
• Change the direction from right to left or right to left.
• Repeat the second and third step until you can't move in the tree.

Zigzag length is defined as the number of nodes visited - 1. (A single node has a length of 0).

Return the longest ZigZag path contained in that tree.

 

Example 1:

Input: root = [1,null,1,1,1,null,null,1,1,null,1,null,null,null,1,null,1]
Output: 3
Explanation: Longest ZigZag path in blue nodes (right -> left -> right).

Example 2:

Input: root = [1,1,1,null,1,null,null,1,1,null,1]
Output: 4
Explanation: Longest ZigZag path in blue nodes (left -> right -> left -> right).

Example 3:

Input: root = [1]
Output: 0

 

Constraints:

• Each tree has at most 50000 nodes..
• Each node's value is between [1, 100].

# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode(object):
#     def __init__(self, x):
#         self.val = x
#         self.left = None
#         self.right = None

class Solution(object):
    def longestZigZag(self, root):
        """
        :type root: TreeNode
        :rtype: int
        """
        def helper(r):
            if not r: return [0,0,0]
            left,right = helper(r.left),helper(r.right)
            return [left[1]+1, right[0]+1, max(left[1]+1, right[0]+1, left[2], right[2])]

        return helper(root)[-1]-1