437. Path Sum III

Keywords: double recursion, DFS

You are given a binary tree in which each node contains an integer value.

Find the number of paths that sum to a given value.

The path does not need to start or end at the root or a leaf, but it must go downwards (traveling only from parent nodes to child nodes).

The tree has no more than 1,000 nodes and the values are in the range -1,000,000 to 1,000,000.

Example:

root = [10,5,-3,3,2,null,11,3,-2,null,1], sum = 8

      10
     /  \
    5   -3
   / \    \
  3   2   11
 / \   \
3  -2   1

Return 3. The paths that sum to 8 are:

1.  5 -> 3
2.  5 -> 2 -> 1
3. -3 -> 11

At first I thought I could solve this problem using recursion. But it turns out I was wrong. I need to used double recursion. First, I need to go over all the nodes and treat it as the root of a tree. Second, I need to count the number of paths beginning from each node. Then, I need to sum them up. That's the final result.

My wrong code:

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
class Solution {
    public int pathSum(TreeNode root, int sum) {
        if (root == null) return 0;
        int result = 0;
        if (root.val == sum) result += 1;
        result += pathSum(root.left, sum) + pathSum(root.right,sum) + pathSum(root.left, sum - root.val) + pathSum(root.right, sum - root.val);
        
        return result;
    }
}

Correct code 1 (DFS):

public class Solution {
    public int pathSum(TreeNode root, int sum) {
        if(root == null)
            return 0;
        return findPath(root, sum) + pathSum(root.left, sum) + pathSum(root.right, sum);
    }
    
    public int findPath(TreeNode root, int sum){
        int res = 0;
        if(root == null)
            return res;
        if(sum == root.val)
            res++;
        res += findPath(root.left, sum - root.val);
        res += findPath(root.right, sum - root.val);
        return res;
    }
}