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
andq
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;
}
};
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