Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

二叉树最近公共祖先

题目

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 p and q as the lowest node in T that has both p and q as descendants (where we allow a node to be a descendant of itself).”

Given the following binary tree: root = [3,5,1,6,2,0,8,null,null,7,4]

Example 1:

Input: root = [3,5,1,6,2,0,8,null,null,7,4], p = 5, q = 1
Output: 3
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 5 and 1 is 3.
Example 2:

Input: root = [3,5,1,6,2,0,8,null,null,7,4], p = 5, q = 4
Output: 5
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 5 and 4 is 5, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

Note:

All of the nodes’ values will be unique.
p and q are different and both values will exist in the binary tree.

解析重点

见代码

java代码

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        /**
        注意p,q必然存在树内, 且所有节点的值唯一!!!
        递归思想, 对以root为根的(子)树进行查找p和q, 如果root == null || p || q 直接返回root
        表示对于当前树的查找已经完毕, 否则对左右子树进行查找, 根据左右子树的返回值判断:
        1. 左右子树的返回值都不为null, 由于值唯一左右子树的返回值就是p和q, 此时root为LCA
        2. 如果左右子树返回值只有一个不为null, 说明只有p和q存在与左或右子树中, 最先找到的那个节点为LCA
        3. 左右子树返回值均为null, p和q均不在树中, 返回null
        **/
        if(root == null || root == p || root == q) return root;
        TreeNode left = lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        TreeNode right = lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
        if(left == null && right == null) return null;
        else if(left != null && right != null) return root;
        else return left == null ? right : left;
    }
}