LeetCode – Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal (Java)

by

Given preorder and inorder traversal of a tree, construct the binary tree.

Analysis

Consider the following example:

in-order:   4 2 5 (1) 6 7 3 8
pre-order: (1) 2 4 5  3 7 6 8

From the pre-order array, we know that first element is the root. We can find the root in in-order array. Then we can identify the left and right sub-trees of the root from in-order array.

Using the length of left sub-tree, we can identify left and right sub-trees in pre-order array. Recursively, we can build up the tree.

For this example, the constructed tree is:
construct-binary-tree-from-inorder-and-postorder-traversal

Java Solution

public TreeNode buildTree(int[] preorder, int[] inorder) {
    int preStart = 0;
    int preEnd = preorder.length-1;
    int inStart = 0;
    int inEnd = inorder.length-1;
 
    return construct(preorder, preStart, preEnd, inorder, inStart, inEnd);
}
 
public TreeNode construct(int[] preorder, int preStart, int preEnd, int[] inorder, int inStart, int inEnd){
    if(preStart>preEnd||inStart>inEnd){
        return null;
    }
 
    int val = preorder[preStart];
    TreeNode p = new TreeNode(val);
 
    //find parent element index from inorder
    int k=0;
    for(int i=0; i<inorder.length; i++){
        if(val == inorder[i]){
            k=i;
            break;
        }
    }
 
    p.left = construct(preorder, preStart+1, preStart+(k-inStart), inorder, inStart, k-1);
    p.right= construct(preorder, preStart+(k-inStart)+1, preEnd, inorder, k+1 , inEnd);
 
    return p;
}

7 thoughts on “LeetCode – Construct Binary Tree from Preorder and Inorder Traversal (Java)”

  4. In the above code, to search for the value in in-order traversal we could use,
    while(inStart<=inEnd)
    {
    }
    instead of searching the entire in-order traversal for each val. Since we are partitioning the left half and right half in sub function calls.

  7. You may use HashMap to save time rather than looping every recursion this won’t consume much space as you already will replace the inOrder array with the hashmap.

Leave a Comment