Least Common Ancestor
In graph theory and computer science, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) (also called least common ancestor) of two nodes and in a tree or directed acyclic graph (DAG) is the lowest (i.e. deepest) node that has both and as descendants, where we define each node to be a descendant of itself (so if has a direct connection from , is the lowest common ancestor). The LCA of and in is the shared ancestor of and that is located farthest from the root. Computation of lowest common ancestors may be useful, for instance, as part of a procedure for determining the distance between pairs of nodes in a tree: the distance from to can be computed as the distance from the root to , plus the distance from the root to , minus twice the distance from the root to their lowest common ancestor . In a tree data structure where each node points to its parent, the lowest common ancestor can be easily determined by finding the first intersection of the paths from and to the root. In general ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]  

Lowest Common Ancestor
In graph theory and computer science, the lowest common ancestor (LCA) (also called least common ancestor) of two nodes and in a Tree (graph theory), tree or directed acyclic graph (DAG) is the lowest (i.e. deepest) node that has both and as descendants, where we define each node to be a descendant of itself (so if has a direct connection from , is the lowest common ancestor). The LCA of and in is the shared ancestor of and that is located farthest from the root. Computation of lowest common ancestors may be useful, for instance, as part of a procedure for determining the distance between pairs of nodes in a tree: the distance from to can be computed as the distance from the root to , plus the distance from the root to , minus twice the distance from the root to their lowest common ancestor . In a tree data structure where each node points to its parent, the lowest common ancestor can be easily determined by finding the first intersection of the paths from and to ...
[...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]