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12. Maximum Depth of Binary Tree

easyAsked at Box

Compute the maximum depth of a binary tree — Box uses this to bound recursive folder-walk depth for permission propagation.

By Alex Chen, Founder, InterviewChamp.AI · Last verified

Problem

Given the root of a binary tree, return its maximum depth. A binary tree's maximum depth is the number of nodes along the longest path from the root node down to the farthest leaf node.

Constraints

  • Number of nodes in [0, 10^4]
  • -100 <= Node.val <= 100

Examples

Example 1

Input
root = [3,9,20,null,null,15,7]
Output
3

Example 2

Input
root = [1,null,2]
Output
2

Approaches

1. BFS level count

Level-order traversal; count levels.

Time
O(n)
Space
O(n)
if (!root) return 0;
let q = [root], d = 0;
while (q.length) {
  const next = [];
  for (const n of q) { if (n.left) next.push(n.left); if (n.right) next.push(n.right); }
  q = next; d++;
}
return d;

Tradeoff:

2. DFS recursion

Depth = 1 + max(left, right). Base case null returns 0.

Time
O(n)
Space
O(h)
function maxDepth(root) {
  if (!root) return 0;
  return 1 + Math.max(maxDepth(root.left), maxDepth(root.right));
}

Tradeoff:

Box-specific tips

Box graders want the one-line DFS recursion verbalized — they map tree-depth bounds to enforcing per-tenant folder-nesting limits in their API.

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Output

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