236-lowest-common-ancestor-of-a-binary-tree

Try it on leetcode

Description

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.

Solution(Python)

class Solution:

    def __init__(self):
        # Variable to store LCA node.
        self.ans = None

    def lowestCommonAncestor(self, root, p, q):
        """
        :type root: TreeNode
        :type p: TreeNode
        :type q: TreeNode
        :rtype: TreeNode
        """
        def recurse_tree(current_node):

            # If reached the end of a branch, return False.
            if not current_node:
                return False

            # Left Recursion
            left = recurse_tree(current_node.left)

            # Right Recursion
            right = recurse_tree(current_node.right)

            # If the current node is one of p or q
            mid = current_node == p or current_node == q

            # If any two of the three flags left, right or mid become True.
            if mid + left + right >= 2:
                self.ans = current_node

            # Return True if either of the three bool values is True.
            return mid or left or right

        # Traverse the tree
        recurse_tree(root)
        return self.ans