606. Construct String from Binary Tree

You need to construct a string consists of parenthesis and integers from a binary tree with the preorder traversing way.

The null node needs to be represented by empty parenthesis pair "()". And you need to omit all the empty parenthesis pairs that don't affect the one-to-one mapping relationship between the string and the original binary tree.

Example 1:

Input:
 Binary tree: [1,2,3,4]
       1
     /   \
    2     3
   /    
  4     

Output: "1(2(4))(3)"

Explanation: Originallay it needs to be "1(2(4)())(3()())", 
but you need to omit all the unnecessary empty parenthesis pairs. 
And it will be "1(2(4))(3)".

Example 2:

Input:
 Binary tree: [1,2,3,null,4]
       1
     /   \
    2     3
     \  
      4 

Output: "1(2()(4))(3)"

Explanation: Almost the same as the first example, 
except we can't omit the first parenthesis pair to break the one-to-one mapping relationship 
between the input and the output.

Thought

The format of string is root(left)(right), () stands for empty node. Omit the empty parenthesis pairs without ambiguity. The first thing in my mind when I need to traverse the tree is recursion. XD

Solution

/**
 * Definition for a binary tree node.
 * public class TreeNode {
 *     int val;
 *     TreeNode left;
 *     TreeNode right;
 *     TreeNode(int x) { val = x; }
 * }
 */
public class Solution {
    public String tree2str(TreeNode t) {
        if (t == null) return "";
        String res = Integer.toString(t.val);
        // the trick is here :D
        if (t.left != null || t.right != null) res += "(" + tree2str(t.left) + ")";
        if (t.right != null) res += "(" + tree2str(t.right) + ")";

        return res;
    }
}

Here we can use StringBuilder or concat method to gain the extra performance in concatenating two Strings .