[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 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).”

Example 1:

Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 8
Output: 6
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 8 is 6.

Example 2:

Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 4
Output: 2
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

Example 3:
Input: root = [2,1], p = 2, q = 1
Output: 2

Constraints:
The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [2, 105].
-109 <= Node.val <= 109
All Node.val are unique.
p != q
p and q will exist in the BST.

二叉搜索树的最小公共祖先。

给定一个二叉搜索树, 找到该树中两个指定节点的最近公共祖先。 百度百科中最近公共祖先的定义为：“对于有根树 T 的两个结点 p、q，最近公共祖先表示为一个结点 x，满足 x 是 p、q 的祖先且 x 的深度尽可能大（一个节点也可以是它自己的祖先）。”

思路

影子题236。题意是给一个二叉搜索树（BST）和两个节点 p 和 q，请找出两个节点的最小公共祖先。思路是递归，因为BST的性质，所以任何节点的左孩子一定比当前节点小，右孩子一定比当前节点大。明白这一点，代码就不难写。

复杂度

时间O(h) - h 是树的高度
空间O(h)

代码

Java实现

class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        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;
        }
    }
}

JavaScript实现

/**
 * @param {TreeNode} root
 * @param {TreeNode} p
 * @param {TreeNode} q
 * @return {TreeNode}
 */
var lowestCommonAncestor = function (root, p, q) {
    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;
    }
};

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