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Program to find out the lowest common ancestor of a binary tree using parent pointers using Python
Suppose, we are given a binary tree and also two specific nodes x and y. We have to find out the lowest common ancestor of the two nodes from the binary tree. The lowest common ancestor in a binary tree is the lowest node of which both the nodes x and y are descendants. A particular node can also be a descendant of itself. We have to find the node and return it as an output.
The node structure of the tree is like below −
TreeNode: data: <integer> left: <pointer of TreeNode> right: <pointer of TreeNode> parent: <pointer of TreeNode>
We have to utilize the parent pointer while finding the solution.
So, if the input is like
and x = 3, y = 7; then the output will be 5.
3 and 7 are both descendants of 5, so the answer will be 5.
To solve this, we will follow these steps −
path_p_r := a new list
while x is not null, do
insert x at the end of path_p_r
x := parent of x
while y is not null, do
if y is present in path_p_r, then
return y
y := parent of y
Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding −
Example
class TreeNode: def __init__(self, data, left = None, right = None, parent = None): self.data = data self.left = left self.right = right self.parent = parent def insert(temp,data): que = [] que.append(temp) while (len(que)): temp = que[0] que.pop(0) if (not temp.left): if data is not None: temp.left = TreeNode(data, parent=temp) else: temp.left = TreeNode(0,parent=temp) break else: que.append(temp.left) if (not temp.right): if data is not None: temp.right = TreeNode(data,parent=temp) else: temp.right = TreeNode(0,parent=temp) break else: que.append(temp.right) def make_tree(elements): Tree = TreeNode(elements[0]) for element in elements[1:]: insert(Tree, element) return Tree def search_node(root, element): if (root == None): return None if (root.data == element): return root res1 = search_node(root.left, element) if res1: return res1 res2 = search_node(root.right, element) return res2 def solve(x, y): path_p_r = [] while x: path_p_r.append(x) x = x.parent while y: if y in path_p_r: return y y = y.parent root = make_tree([5, 3, 7, 2, 4, 1, 7, 6, 8, 10]) print(solve(search_node(root, 3), search_node(root, 7)).data)
Input
[5, 3, 7, 2, 4, 1, 7, 6, 8, 10], 3, 7
Output
5
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