Section 1Understand Problem
Section 01
Understand the problem
Restate the problem precisely. Interviewers reward candidates who pause, define the contract, and name the guarantees before coding.
Problem statement
A *path* in a binary tree is a sequence of nodes where each pair of adjacent nodes in the sequence has an edge connecting them. A node can only appear in the sequence at most once. Note that the path does not need to pass through the root. The *path sum* of a path is the sum of the node's values in the path. Given the `root` of a binary tree, return the maximum path sum of any non-empty path.
Example
root = [1,2,3] → 6
Constraints
1 ≤ tree size ≤ 3 × 10⁴ · −1000 ≤ Node.val ≤ 1000
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