Leetcode: 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 the definition 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 allow a node to be a descendant of itself).”

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

For example, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) of nodes 2 and 8 is 6. Another example is LCA of nodes 2 and 4 is 2, since a node can be a descendant of itself according to the LCA definition.

Understand the problem:
The problem can be solved by either treating the BST as a regular binary tree, or BST. 
For the binary tree solution, we could check out the previous post using divide and conquer solution. 

Now let's take a look at the solution for BST.

Code (Java):

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        if (root == null) {
            return root;
        }
        
        if (root.val > p.val && root.val < q.val) {
            return root;
        } else if (root.val > p.val && root.val > q.val) {
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        } else if (root.val < p.val && root.val < q.val) {
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
        }
        
        return root;
    }
}

Update on 1/27/16:
I think this solution is clearer in the sense that we need to make sure node p and always at left of q.

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public TreeNode lowestCommonAncestor(TreeNode root, TreeNode p, TreeNode q) {
        if (root == null || p == null || q == null) {
            return null;
        }
        
        // Make sure p is on the left of q
        if (p.val > q.val) {
            TreeNode temp = p;
            p = q;
            q = temp;
        }
        
        if (root.val >= p.val && root.val <= q.val) {
            return root;
        } else if (root.val > p.val && root.val > q.val) {
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.left, p, q);
        } else {
            return lowestCommonAncestor(root.right, p, q);
        }
    }
}