problem742

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742. Closest Leaf in a Binary Tree (Medium)

Given a binary tree where every node has a unique value, and a target key k, find the value of the nearest leaf node to target k in the tree.

Here, nearest to a leaf means the least number of edges travelled on the binary tree to reach any leaf of the tree. Also, a node is called a leaf if it has no children.

In the following examples, the input tree is represented in flattened form row by row. The actual root tree given will be a TreeNode object.

Example 1:

Input:
root = [1, 3, 2], k = 1
Diagram of binary tree:
          1
         / \
        3   2
Output: 2 (or 3)
Explanation: Either 2 or 3 is the nearest leaf node to the target of 1.

Example 2:

Input:
root = [1], k = 1
Output: 1
Explanation: The nearest leaf node is the root node itself.

Example 3:

Input:
root = [1,2,3,4,null,null,null,5,null,6], k = 2
Diagram of binary tree:
             1
            / \
           2   3
          /
         4
        /
       5
      /
     6
Output: 3
Explanation: The leaf node with value 3 (and not the leaf node with value 6) is nearest to the node with value 2.

Note:

1. root represents a binary tree with at least 1 node and at most 1000 nodes.
2. Every node has a unique node.val in range [1, 1000].
3. There exists some node in the given binary tree for which node.val == k.

Related Topics

[Tree]

Hints

Hint 1

Convert the tree to a general graph, and do a breadth-first search. Alternatively, find the closest leaf for every node on the path from root to target.