Delete Leaves With a Given Value

Given a binary tree root and an integer target, delete all the leaf nodes with value target.

Note that once you delete a leaf node with value target, if its parent node becomes a leaf node and has the value target, it should also be deleted (you need to continue doing that until you cannot).

Example 1:

Input: root = [1,2,3,2,null,2,4], target = 2
Output: [1,null,3,null,4]
Explanation: Leaf nodes in green with value (target = 2) are removed (Picture in left).
After removing, new nodes become leaf nodes with value (target = 2) (Picture in center).

Example 2:

Input: root = [1,3,3,3,2], target = 3
Output: [1,3,null,null,2]

Example 3:

Input: root = [1,2,null,2,null,2], target = 2
Output: [1]
Explanation: Leaf nodes in green with value (target = 2) are removed at each step.

Constraints:

• The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [1, 3000].
• 1 <= Node.val, target <= 1000

SOLUTION:

# Definition for a binary tree node.
# class TreeNode:
#     def __init__(self, val=0, left=None, right=None):
#         self.val = val
#         self.left = left
#         self.right = right
class Solution:
    def removeLeafNodes(self, root: Optional[TreeNode], target: int) -> Optional[TreeNode]:
        if root:
            if not root.left and not root.right and root.val == target:
                return None
            root.left = self.removeLeafNodes(root.left, target)
            root.right = self.removeLeafNodes(root.right, target)
            if not root.left and not root.right and root.val == target:
                return None
        return root