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1372. Longest ZigZag Path in a Binary Tree

You are given the root of a binary tree.

A ZigZag path for a binary tree is defined as follow:

• Choose any node in the binary tree and a direction (right or left).
• If the current direction is right, move to the right child of the current node; otherwise, move to the left child.
• Change the direction from right to left or from left to right.
• Repeat the second and third steps until you can't move in the tree.

Zigzag length is defined as the number of nodes visited - 1. (A single node has a length of 0).

Return the longest ZigZag path contained in that tree.

Example 1:

Input: root = [1,null,1,1,1,null,null,1,1,null,1,null,null,null,1]
Output: 3
Explanation: Longest ZigZag path in blue nodes (right -> left -> right).

Example 2:

Input: root = [1,1,1,null,1,null,null,1,1,null,1]
Output: 4
Explanation: Longest ZigZag path in blue nodes (left -> right -> left -> right).

Example 3:

Input: root = [1]
Output: 0

Constraints:

• The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [1, 5 * 104].
• 1 <= Node.val <= 100

Solutions (Python)

1. Solution

# 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 longestZigZag(self, root: Optional[TreeNode]) -> int:
        return self.dfs(root)[0]

    def dfs(self, root: Optional[TreeNode]) -> (int, int, int):
        if root is None:
            return (0, -1, -1)

        left = self.dfs(root.left)
        right = self.dfs(root.right)
        maxpath = max(left[0], left[1], left[2] + 1,
                      right[0], right[1] + 1, right[2])

        return (maxpath, left[2] + 1, right[1] + 1)