Sum of Left Leaves

Posted on November 16, 2016

Problem:

Find the sum of all left leaves in a given binary tree.

Example:

3
/ \
9 20
/ \
15 7

There are two left leaves in the binary tree, with values 9 and 15 respectively. Return 24.

Solution:

For tree traversal, think in recursion way first. The point is to catch the left leaves. So the base case  includes catching a left leaf. Then just recursively call itself on both left subtree and right subtree to find all the left leaves.