Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree
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 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).”
_______3______
/ \
___5__ ___1__
/ \ / \
6 _2 0 8
/ \
7 4
For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 5 and 1 is 3. Another example is LCA of nodes 5 and 4 is 5, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.
The node which has both left and right will be the LCA.
public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
if(root == null || root == p || root == q) return root;
TreeNode left = lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q), right = lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
if(left != null && right != null) return root;
else return left == null ? right : left;
}