236. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree

236. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree | LeetCode Solution

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

Constraints:

The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [2, 105].
-109 <= Node.val <= 109
All Node.val are unique.
p != q
p and q will exist in the tree.

The solution to the above question is -

/**
 * 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)
  {
    if (root == NULL)
      return root;

    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;
    }
    else if (left == NULL)
    {
      return right;
    }
    else
    {
      return left;
    }
    return root;
  }
};