Leetcode•May 25, 2025
Lowest Common Ancestor of a Binary Tree
Hazrat Ali
Leetcode
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
Solution
/**
* @param {TreeNode} root
* @param {TreeNode} p
* @param {TreeNode} q
* @return {TreeNode}
*/
const lowestCommonAncestor = (root, p, q) => {
if (!root || root === p || root === q) {
return root;
}
const left = lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
const right = lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
if (left && right) {
return root;
}
return left ? left : right;
};