Problem: Diameter of Binary Tree

Posted by Marcy on February 18, 2015

Question

Given a binary tree, you need to compute the length of the diameter of the tree. The diameter of a binary tree is the length of the longest path between any two nodes in a tree. This path may or may not pass through the root.

Example: Given a binary tree

          1
         / \
        2   3
       / \     
      4   5    

Return 3, which is the length of the path [4,2,1,3] or [5,2,1,3].

Note: The length of path between two nodes is represented by the number of edges between them.

Solution

TODO

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 {
    int max = 0;
    public int diameterOfBinaryTree(TreeNode root) {
        calHeight(root);
        
        return max;
    }
    
    public int calHeight(TreeNode root) {
        if(root == null) return 0;
        int l = calHeight(root.left);
        int r = calHeight(root.right);
        
        max = Math.max(l+r, max);
        
        return Math.max(l, r) + 1;
    }
}

Performance

O(n)