235. Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Search Tree

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

According to thedefinition 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 allowa node to be a descendant of itself).”

        _______6______
       /              \
    ___2__          ___8__
   /      \        /      \
   0      _4       7       9
         /  \
         3   5

For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes2and8is6. Another example is LCA of nodes2and4is2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

/**
 * 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) {

        if (root == null) return null;

        TreeNode leftResult = lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        TreeNode rightResult = lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);

        if (root.val == p.val || root.val == q.val){
            return root;
        }
        else if (leftResult != null && rightResult != null){
            return root;
        }
        else if (leftResult != null){
            return leftResult;
        }
        else{
            return rightResult;
        }
    }
}

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