LeetCode 124: Binary Tree Maximum Path Sum

Question

I'm posting my code for a LeetCode problem. If you'd like to review, please do so. Thank you for your time!

Problem

Given a non-empty binary tree, find the maximum path sum.

For this problem, a path is defined as any sequence of nodes from some starting node to any node in the tree along the parent-child connections. The path must contain at least one node and does not need to go through the root.

Example 1:

Input: [1,2,3]

       1
      / \
     2   3

Output: 6

Example 2:

Input: [-10,9,20,null,null,15,7]

   -10
   / \
  9  20
    /  \
   15   7

Output: 42

Inputs

[1,2,3]
[-10,9,20,null,null,15,7]
[-10,9,20,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,7]
[-10,9,20,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,720,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,7]
[-10,9,20,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,720,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,7999999,20,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,720,null,null,15,7,9,20,null,null,15,7]

Outputs

6
42
66
791
8001552

Code

#include <cstdint>
#include <algorithm>

struct Solution {
    int maxPathSum(TreeNode* root) {
        std::int_fast64_t sum = INT_FAST64_MIN;
        depthFirstSearch(root, sum);
        return sum;
    }

private:
    static std::int_fast64_t depthFirstSearch(
        const TreeNode* node,
        std::int_fast64_t& sum
    ) {

        if (!node) {
            return 0;
        }

        const std::int_fast64_t left = std::max(
                                           (std::int_fast64_t) 0,
                                           depthFirstSearch(node->left, sum)
                                       );
        const std::int_fast64_t right = std::max(
                                            (std::int_fast64_t) 0,
                                            depthFirstSearch(node->right, sum)
                                        );
        sum = std::max(sum, left + right + node->val);
        return std::max(left, right) + node->val;
    }
};

References

• Problem

• Discuss

• Solution

Answer 1

There's not much to say about your answer, it looks fine! One could quibble over the names of variables, maybe left and right could be named left_sum and right_sum for example, and you could've used auto for the type of those two variables. But other than that I think there is nothing that can be improved.

Answer 2

Not sure why you decided to use std::int_fast64_t over the common int that is used as the type of the tree nodes values.

But since you did, it would be more idiomatic to do at least:

static_cast<std::int_fast64_t>(0);

instead of

(std::int_fast64_t) 0;