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 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   5

For 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.

分析：二叉排序树（又叫二叉查找树）或者是一棵空树，或者是具有下列性质的二叉树：
（1）若左子树不空，则左子树上所有结点的值均小于它的根结点的值；
（2）若右子树不空，则右子树上所有结点的值均大于它的根结点的值；
（3）左、右子树也分别为二叉排序树；
（4）没有键值相等的节点。(以上来自百度百科)

可以根据二叉排序树的特点，利用递归算法来解决：

代码：

/**
 * 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) {
        if(root == null || p == null || q == null) return null;
        if(p.val < root.val && q.val < root.val){
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        }
        if(p.val > root.val && q.val > root.val){
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
        }
        return root;
    }
}