花花酱 LeetCode 1372. Longest ZigZag Path in a Binary Tree

Given a binary tree root, a ZigZag path for a binary tree is defined as follow:

• Choose any node in the binary tree and a direction (right or left).
• If the current direction is right then move to the right child of the current node otherwise move to the left child.
• Change the direction from right to left or right to left.
• Repeat the second and third step until you can’t move in the tree.

Zigzag length is defined as the number of nodes visited – 1. (A single node has a length of 0).

Return the longest ZigZag path contained in that tree.

Example 1:

Input: root = [1,null,1,1,1,null,null,1,1,null,1,null,null,null,1,null,1]
Output: 3
Explanation: Longest ZigZag path in blue nodes (right -> left -> right).

Example 2:

Input: root = [1,1,1,null,1,null,null,1,1,null,1]
Output: 4
Explanation: Longest ZigZag path in blue nodes (left -> right -> left -> right).

Example 3:

Input: root = [1]
Output: 0

Constraints:

• Each tree has at most 50000 nodes..
• Each node’s value is between [1, 100].

Solution: Recursion

For each node return
1. max ZigZag length if go left
2. max ZigZag length if go right
3. maz ZigZag length within the subtree

ZigZag(root):
ll, lr, lm = ZigZag(root.left)
rl, rr, rm = ZigZag(root.right)
return (lr+1, rl + 1, max(lr+1, rl+1, lm, rm))

Time complexity: O(n)
Space complexity: O(h)