Find Leaves of Binary Tree

366. Find Leaves of Binary Tree

Given a binary tree, collect a tree's nodes as if you were doing this: Collect and remove all leaves, repeat until the tree is empty.

Example:
Given binary tree

          1
         / \
        2   3
       / \     
      4   5    

Returns [4, 5, 3], [2], [1].

Explanation:

  1. Removing the leaves [4, 5, 3] would result in this tree:
          1
         / 
        2  
  1. Now removing the leaf [2] would result in this tree:
          1   
  1. Now removing the leaf [1] would result in the empty tree:
          [] 

Returns [4, 5, 3], [2], [1].

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public List<List<Integer>> findLeaves(TreeNode root) {
        List<List<Integer>> result = new ArrayList<>();
        if (root == null) {
            return result;
        }
        
        findLeavesHelper(root, result);
        
        return result;
    }
    
    private int findLeavesHelper(TreeNode root, List<List<Integer>> result) {
        if (root == null) {
            return -1;
        }
        
        int leftLevel = findLeavesHelper(root.left, result);
        int rightLevel = findLeavesHelper(root.right, result);
        int level = Math.max(leftLevel, rightLevel) + 1;
        
        if (result.size() == level) {
            result.add(new ArrayList<>());
        }
        
        result.get(level).add(root.val);
        root.left = root.right = null;
        
        return level;
    }
}

Hope this helps,
Michael

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