Identifying Nearest Common Ancestors in a Distributed Environment

TR-2001-6, Authors: Stephen Alstrup, Cyril Gavoille, Haim Kaplan and Theis Rauhe

Stephen Alstrup
Cyril Gavoille
Haim Kaplan
Theis Rauhe

July 2001

Abstract

We give a simple algorithm that labels the nodes of a rooted tree such that from the labels of two nodes alone one can compute in constant time the label of their nearest common ancestor. The labels assigned by our algorithm are of size O(log n) bits where n is the number of nodes in the tree. The algorithm runs in O(n) time.
Technical report TR-2001-6 in IT University Technical Report Series, August 2001.
Available as PDF.