Thomas Ngo

Software Engineer

1 minute read

Problem Statement

problem See problem here.

Intuition

The problem requires calculating the sum of values within a binary search tree (BST) that fall within a specified range. My initial thoughts involve performing a depth-first traversal of the BST, and for each node, checking if its value lies within the given range. If it does, I will include it in the sum, and then recursively explore its left and right subtrees.

Approach

The approach involves a recursive depth-first traversal of the BST. Given a function rangeSumBST that takes a node, low, and high as parameters. Within this function:

  • I handle the base case where the node is None, returning 0. If the value of the current node is within the specified range (low to high inclusive), I include it in the result and recursively call the function on its left and right children.
  • If the value is less than low, I explore only the right subtree.
  • If the value is greater than high, I explore only the left subtree. The final result is the sum of values within the specified range.

Complexity

  • Time complexity: O(n) - The algorithm traverses each node of the BST once.

  • Space complexity: O(h) - The space required by the recursive call stack is proportional to the height of the BST, where h is the height. In the worst case, when the tree is skewed, the space complexity is O(n).

Code

# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode:
#     def __init__(self, val=0, left=None, right=None):
#         self.val = val
#         self.left = left
#         self.right = right
class Solution:
    def rangeSumBST(self, root: Optional[TreeNode], low: int, high: int) -> int:
        if not root:
            return 0
            
        result = 0
        
        if low <= root.val <= high:
            result += root.val + self.rangeSumBST(root.left, low, high) + self.rangeSumBST(root.right, low, high)
        else:
            if root.val < low:
                result += self.rangeSumBST(root.right, low, high)
            elif root.val > high:
                result += self.rangeSumBST(root.left, low, high)
    

        return result

Editorial Solution

Iterative implementation

class Solution:
    def rangeSumBST(self, root: Optional[TreeNode], low: int, high: int) -> int:
        ans = 0
        stack = [root]
        while stack:
            node = stack.pop()
            if node:
                if low <= node.val <= high:
                    ans += node.val
                if low < node.val:
                    stack.append(node.left)
                if node.val < high:
                    stack.append(node.right)
        return ans

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