LeetCode-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.

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     public int val;
 *     public TreeNode left;
 *     public TreeNode right;
 *     public TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */

• 两个值都在左边，则LCA在左边
• 两个值都在右边，则LCA在右边
• 一个在左一个在右，则说明LCA就是当前的root节点。

递归解：

public TreeNode LowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q)
    {
          if (root == null)
                return null;
            if (root.val > p.val && root.val > q.val)
                return LowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
            else if (root.val < p.val && root.val < q.val)
                return LowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
            else
                return root;
    }

非递归解：

public TreeNode LowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q)
    {
          if (root == null)
                return null;
            while ((root.val-p.val)*(root.val - q.val)>0)
                root = p.val < root.val ? root.left : root.right;
            return root;
    }

关于LCA问题，这篇博客写的还不错： https://www.hrwhisper.me/algorithm-lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree/