Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree Link
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 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).”
Given binary search tree: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5]
4
/ \
3 6
/ \ / \
0 8 5 7
/ \
1 9
Example:
Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 3, q = 6
Output: 7
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 6 and 3 is 7.
Note:
- All of the nodes’ values will be unique.
- p and q are different and both values will exist in the BST.
Solution:
This is the problem given only to check your basic understanding of BST. First we go through the basic points on BST:
- Left subtree of a node N contains nodes whose values are lesser than or equal to node N’s value.
- Right subtree of a node N contains nodes whose values are greater than node N’s value.
- Both left and right subtrees are also BSTs.
These basic understanding is the logic behind it’s implementation:
Implementation:
Java:
public static class Solution {
public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
if (root == null || p == root || q == root) {
return root;
}
if ((root.val - p.val) * (root.val - q.val) > 0) {
if (root.val - p.val > 0) {
return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
}
return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
}
return root;
}
}
Complexity Analysis:
- Time Complexity: O(n).
- Space Complexity: O(n).