LeetCode 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.
/**
* 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) {
vector<TreeNode*> path1;
vector<TreeNode*> path2;
dfs(root, p, path1);
dfs(root, q, path2);
int pos = 0;
int len = min(path1.size(), path2.size());
TreeNode* comm = NULL;
while (pos < len && path1[pos] == path2[pos]) {
comm = path1[pos++];
}
return comm;
}
bool dfs(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* target, vector<TreeNode*>& path) {
if (root == NULL) {
return false;
}
path.push_back(root);
if (root == target) {
return true;
}
if (dfs(root->left, target, path)) {
return true;
}
if (dfs(root->right, target, path)) {
return true;
}
path.pop_back();
return false;
}
};