Problem: Binary Tree Vertical Order Traversal

Posted by Marcy on February 18, 2015

Question

Given a binary tree, return the vertical order traversal of its nodes’ values. (ie, from top to bottom, column by column).

If two nodes are in the same row and column, the order should be from left to right.

Examples 1:

Input: [3,9,20,null,null,15,7]

   3
  /\
 /  \
 9  20
    /\
   /  \
  15   7 

Output:

[
  [9],
  [3,15],
  [20],
  [7]
]

Examples 2:

Input: [3,9,8,4,0,1,7]

     3
    /\
   /  \
   9   8
  /\  /\
 /  \/  \
 4  01   7 

Output:

[
  [4],
  [9],
  [3,0,1],
  [8],
  [7]
]

Examples 3:

Input: [3,9,8,4,0,1,7,null,null,null,2,5] (0's right child is 2 and 1's left child is 5)

     3
    /\
   /  \
   9   8
  /\  /\
 /  \/  \
 4  01   7
    /\
   /  \
   5   2

Output:

[
  [4],
  [9,5],
  [3,0,1],
  [8,2],
  [7]
]

Solution

TODO

Use BFS.

Code

Here is a sample solution.

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
class Solution {
    public List<List<Integer>> verticalOrder(TreeNode root) {
        Map<TreeNode, Integer> colMap = new HashMap<>();
        Map<Integer, List<Integer>> colLists = new HashMap<>();
        Queue<TreeNode> q = new LinkedList<>();
        if(root != null) {
            q.add(root);
            colMap.put(root, 0);
        }
        int minCol = 0;
        while(!q.isEmpty()) {
            TreeNode n = q.poll();
            int col = colMap.get(n);
            if(!colLists.containsKey(col)) colLists.put(col, new ArrayList<Integer>());
            colLists.get(col).add(n.val);
            if(n.left != null) {
                int leftCol = col-1;
                if(minCol > leftCol) minCol = leftCol;
                colMap.put(n.left,col-1);
                q.add(n.left);
            }
            if(n.right != null) {
                colMap.put(n.right,col+1);
                q.add(n.right);
            }
        }

        List<List<Integer>> results = new ArrayList<List<Integer>>();
        for(int i=minCol; colLists.containsKey(i); i++) {
            results.add(colLists.get(i));
        }
        return results;
    }
}

Performance

TODO