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).”
_______6______ / \ ___2__ ___8__ / \ / \ 0 _4 7 9 / \ 3 5For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 2 and 8 is 6. Another example is LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.
Java AC
/** * Definition for a binary tree node. * public class TreeNode { * int val; * TreeNode left; * TreeNode right; * TreeNode(int x) { val = x; } * } */ public class Solution { public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) { List<TreeNode> list1 = new ArrayList<TreeNode>(); List<TreeNode> list2 = new ArrayList<TreeNode>(); getPath(root, p, list1); getPath(root, q, list2); int size1 = list1.size(); int size2 = list2.size(); int len = size1 < size2 ? size1 : size2; int k = 0; while (k < len){ TreeNode node1 = list1.get(k); TreeNode node2 = list2.get(k); if (node1 != node2){ break; } k++; } return list1.get(k - 1); } private void getPath(TreeNode root, TreeNode d, List<TreeNode> list){ if (root != null){ int rval = root.val; int dval = d.val; list.add(root); if (dval < rval){ getPath(root.left, d, list); }else if (dval > rval){ getPath(root.right, d, list); } } } }