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.

class Solution {
public:
    TreeNode* lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode* root, TreeNode* p, TreeNode* q) {
        if(root==NULL) return NULL;
        if(root== p || root==q) {return root;}
        else
        {
           TreeNode* L=lowestCommonAncestor(root->left,p ,q);
           TreeNode* R=lowestCommonAncestor(root->right,p ,q);
           if(L!=NULL && R!=NULL) return root;
           else return L==NULL?R:L;
        }
         
    }
};