[leetcode] 236. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

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.

解法一：

如果一个node是LCA，那么从n->left和n->right是分别可能找到p和q的，否则会有一个为null。如果其实一个为null，说明LCA在另一外，这就是为什么有left?left:right。

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * struct TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode *left;
 *     TreeNode *right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) : val(x), left(NULL), right(NULL) {}
 * };
 */
class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        if(!root || root==p || root==q) return root;
        
        TreeNode* left = lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
        TreeNode* right = lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p, q);
        if(left&&right) return root;
        return left?left:right;
        
    }
};

解法二：

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * struct TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode *left;
 *     TreeNode *right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) : val(x), left(NULL), right(NULL) {}
 * };
 */
class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        if(!root || root==p || root==q) return root;
        
        TreeNode* left = lowestCommonAncestor(root->left, p, q);
        if(left && left!= p && left!=q) return left;
        TreeNode* right = lowestCommonAncestor(root->right, p, q);
        if(right && right!=p && right!=q) return right;
        if(left&&right) return root;
        return left?left:right;
        
    }
};