230. Kth Smallest Element in a BST

Given a binary search tree, write a function kthSmallest to find the kth smallest element in it.

Note: 
You may assume k is always valid, 1 ? k ? BST's total elements.

Follow up:
What if the BST is modified (insert/delete operations) often and you need to find the kth smallest frequently? How would you optimize the kthSmallest routine?

Credits:
Special thanks to @ts for adding this problem and creating all test cases.

根据BST的性质，一路向左下找到最小的，同时一路push，到底了pop一个得到1th small，有右节点的话push进去，再次一路push，找到2th small，依此类推。代码如下：

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
        Stack<TreeNode> stack = new Stack<TreeNode>();
        HashSet<TreeNode> hs = new HashSet<TreeNode>();
        TreeNode resNode = null;
        stack.push(root);
        while (k > 0) {
            while (stack.peek().left != null && !hs.contains(stack.peek().left)) {
                stack.push(stack.peek().left);
            }
            k --;
            resNode = stack.pop();
            hs.add(resNode);
            if (resNode.right != null) {
                stack.push(resNode.right);
            }
        }
        return resNode.val;
    }
}

第二种是DFS递归的方法。代码如下：

public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
        int count = countNodes(root.left);
        if (k <= count) {
            return kthSmallest(root.left, k);
        } else if (k > count + 1) {
            return kthSmallest(root.right, k-1-count); // 1 is counted as current node
        }
        
        return root.val;
    }
    
    public int countNodes(TreeNode n) {
        if (n == null) return 0;
        
        return 1 + countNodes(n.left) + countNodes(n.right);
    }

第三种方法，中序遍历。代码如下：

// better keep these two variables in a wrapper class
    private static int number = 0;
    private static int count = 0;

    public int kthSmallest(TreeNode root, int k) {
        count = k;
        helper(root);
        return number;
    }
    
    public void helper(TreeNode n) {
        if (n.left != null) helper(n.left);
        count--;
        if (count == 0) {
            number = n.val;
            return;
        }
        if (n.right != null) helper(n.right);
    }