Table of Contents

Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

Given a binary search tree (BST), find the lowest common ancestor (LCA) node 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).”

Example 1:

Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 8
Output: 6
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 8 is 6.

Example 2:

Input: root = [6,2,8,0,4,7,9,null,null,3,5], p = 2, q = 4
Output: 2
Explanation: The LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

Example 3:

Input: root = [2,1], p = 2, q = 1
Output: 2

Solution

class Solution:
    def lowestCommonAncestor(self, root: 'TreeNode', p: 'TreeNode', q: 'TreeNode') -> 'TreeNode':
        if root.val > p.val and root.val > q.val:
            return self.lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q)
        if root.val < p.val and root.val < q.val:
            return self.lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q)
        return root