binary-tree
depth-first-search
recursion

Given the root of a binary tree and an integer targetSum, return true if the tree has a root-to-leaf path such that adding up all the values along the path equals targetSum, or false otherwise.

A leaf is a node with no children. A path must start at the root and end at a leaf — it cannot stop partway down.

Input / output

  • Input: root: TreeNode, targetSum: int (JSON test fixture for root is a LeetCode-style level-order array, e.g. [5,4,8,11,null,13,4,7,2,null,null,null,1], with null for a missing child)
  • Output: boolean

Constraints

  • 0 <= number of nodes <= 5,000
  • -1,000 <= node value <= 1,000
  • -1,000 <= targetSum <= 1,000

Follow-up

Can you solve it iteratively with an explicit stack instead of recursion, tracking the running sum alongside each node?

Examples

Example 1

Input: root = [5,4,8,11,null,13,4,7,2,null,null,null,1], targetSum = 22
Output: true

Example 2

Input: root = [1,2,3], targetSum = 5
Output: false

Example 3 (empty tree)

Input: root = [], targetSum = 0
Output: false
🔒 6 hidden

Running will execute all 9 cases, including 6 hidden ones.