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 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 = [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.

Example 3:

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

Solution

/**

* 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) {

if(root == null) {

return null;

}

if(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 root;

}

return (left == null)?right:left;

}

}