Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

Difficulty: Easy

Given a binary search tree (BST), find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of two given nodes in the BST.

According to the : “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.

Solution

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        while (null!=root && (root.val - p.val) * (root.val - q.val) > 0)
            root = p.val < root.val ? root.left : root.right;
        return root;
    }
}