235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

题目：

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 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.

思路：

本题题目出得花里胡哨的，其实这类BTS的题目都是毫无意义的，只要抓住递归的本质，首先做这类与数据结构密切相关的题目时，一定要熟悉BTS的性质：

（1）若左子树不空，则左子树上所有结点的值均小于或等于它的根结点的值；

（2）若右子树不空，则右子树上所有结点的值均大于或等于它的根结点的值；

（3）左、右子树也分别为二叉排序树；

代码：

/** * 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(p->val<root->val&&q->val<root->val)            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->left,p,q);        else if(p->val>root->val&&q->val>root->val)            return lowestCommonAncestor(root->right,p,q);        else            return root;            }};