2023-09-16
1631. Path With Minimum Effort

Topic: Array, Binary Search, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Union Find, Heap (Priority Queue), Matrix
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
You are a hiker preparing for an upcoming hike. You are given heights, a 2D array of size rows x columns, where heights[row][col] represents the height of cell (row, col). You are situated in the top-left cell, (0, 0), and you hope to travel to the bottom-right cell, (rows-1, columns-1) (i.e., 0-indexed). You can move up, down, left, or right, and you wish to find a route that requires the minimum effort.

A route's effort is the maximum absolute difference in heights between two consecutive cells of the route.

Return the minimum effort required to travel from the top-left cell to the bottom-right cell.

Example 1:

Image: https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2020/10/04/ex1.png

Input: heights = [[1,2,2],[3,8,2],[5,3,5]]
Output: 2
Explanation: The route of [1,3,5,3,5] has a maximum absolute difference of 2 in consecutive cells.
This is better than the route of [1,2,2,2,5], where the maximum absolute difference is 3.

Example 2:

Image: https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2020/10/04/ex2.png

Input: heights = [[1,2,3],[3,8,4],[5,3,5]]
Output: 1
Explanation: The route of [1,2,3,4,5] has a maximum absolute difference of 1 in consecutive cells, which is better than route [1,3,5,3,5].

Example 3:

Image: https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2020/10/04/ex3.png

Input: heights = [[1,2,1,1,1],[1,2,1,2,1],[1,2,1,2,1],[1,2,1,2,1],[1,1,1,2,1]]
Output: 0
Explanation: This route does not require any effort.

Constraints:

• rows == heights.length
• columns == heights[i].length
• 1 <= rows, columns <= 100
• 1 <= heights[i][j] <= 10^6

2023-09-17
847. Shortest Path Visiting All Nodes

Topic: Dynamic Programming, Bit Manipulation, Breadth-First Search, Graph, Bitmask
Difficulty: Hard

Problem:
You have an undirected, connected graph of n nodes labeled from 0 to n - 1. You are given an array graph where graph[i] is a list of all the nodes connected with node i by an edge.

Return the length of the shortest path that visits every node. You may start and stop at any node, you may revisit nodes multiple times, and you may reuse edges.

Example 1:

Image: https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2021/05/12/shortest1-graph.jpg

Input: graph = [[1,2,3],[0],[0],[0]]
Output: 4
Explanation: One possible path is [1,0,2,0,3]

Example 2:

Image: https://assets.leetcode.com/uploads/2021/05/12/shortest2-graph.jpg

Input: graph = [[1],[0,2,4],[1,3,4],[2],[1,2]]
Output: 4
Explanation: One possible path is [0,1,4,2,3]

Constraints:

• n == graph.length
• 1 <= n <= 12
• 0 <= graph[i].length < n
• graph[i] does not contain i.
• If graph[a] contains b, then graph[b] contains a.
• The input graph is always connected.

2023-09-18
1337. The K Weakest Rows in a Matrix

Topic: Array, Binary Search, Sorting, Heap (Priority Queue), Matrix
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
You are given an m x n binary matrix mat of 1's (representing soldiers) and 0's (representing civilians). The soldiers are positioned in front of the civilians. That is, all the 1's will appear to the left of all the 0's in each row.

A row i is weaker than a row j if one of the following is true:

• The number of soldiers in row i is less than the number of soldiers in row j.
• Both rows have the same number of soldiers and i < j.

Return the indices of the k weakest rows in the matrix ordered from weakest to strongest.

Example 1:

Input: mat = 
[[1,1,0,0,0],
 [1,1,1,1,0],
 [1,0,0,0,0],
 [1,1,0,0,0],
 [1,1,1,1,1]], 
k = 3
Output: [2,0,3]
Explanation: 
The number of soldiers in each row is: 
- Row 0: 2 
- Row 1: 4 
- Row 2: 1 
- Row 3: 2 
- Row 4: 5 
The rows ordered from weakest to strongest are [2,0,3,1,4].

Example 2:

Input: mat = 
[[1,0,0,0],
 [1,1,1,1],
 [1,0,0,0],
 [1,0,0,0]], 
k = 2
Output: [0,2]
Explanation: 
The number of soldiers in each row is: 
- Row 0: 1 
- Row 1: 4 
- Row 2: 1 
- Row 3: 1 
The rows ordered from weakest to strongest are [0,2,3,1].

Constraints:

• m == mat.length
• n == mat[i].length
• 2 <= n, m <= 100
• 1 <= k <= m
• matrix[i][j] is either 0 or 1.

2023-09-19
287. Find the Duplicate Number

Topic: Array, Two Pointers, Binary Search, Bit Manipulation
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
Given an array of integers nums containing n + 1 integers where each integer is in the range [1, n] inclusive.

There is only one repeated number in nums, return this repeated number.

You must solve the problem without modifying the array nums and uses only constant extra space.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,3,4,2,2]
Output: 2

Example 2:

Input: nums = [3,1,3,4,2]
Output: 3

Constraints:

• 1 <= n <= 10^5
• nums.length == n + 1
• 1 <= nums[i] <= n
• All the integers in nums appear only once except for precisely one integer which appears two or more times.

Follow up:

• How can we prove that at least one duplicate number must exist in nums?
• Can you solve the problem in linear runtime complexity?

2023-09-20
1658. Minimum Operations to Reduce X to Zero

Topic: Array, Hash Table, Binary Search, Sliding Window, Prefix Sum
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
You are given an integer array nums and an integer x. In one operation, you can either remove the leftmost or the rightmost element from the array nums and subtract its value from x. Note that this modifies the array for future operations.

Return the minimum number of operations to reduce x to exactly 0 if it is possible, otherwise, return -1.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,1,4,2,3], x = 5
Output: 2
Explanation: The optimal solution is to remove the last two elements to reduce x to zero.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [5,6,7,8,9], x = 4
Output: -1

Example 3:

Input: nums = [3,2,20,1,1,3], x = 10
Output: 5
Explanation: The optimal solution is to remove the last three elements and the first two elements (5 operations in total) to reduce x to zero.

Constraints:

• 1 <= nums.length <= 10^5
• 1 <= nums[i] <= 10^4
• 1 <= x <= 10^9

2023-09-21
4. Median of Two Sorted Arrays

Topic: Array, Binary Search, Divide and Conquer
Difficulty: Hard

Problem:
Given two sorted arrays nums1 and nums2 of size m and n respectively, return the median of the two sorted arrays.

The overall run time complexity should be O(log (m+n)).

Example 1:

Input: nums1 = [1,3], nums2 = [2]
Output: 2.00000
Explanation: merged array = [1,2,3] and median is 2.

Example 2:

Input: nums1 = [1,2], nums2 = [3,4]
Output: 2.50000
Explanation: merged array = [1,2,3,4] and median is (2 + 3) / 2 = 2.5.

Constraints:

• nums1.length == m
• nums2.length == n
• 0 <= m <= 1000
• 0 <= n <= 1000
• 1 <= m + n <= 2000
• -10^6 <= nums1[i], nums2[i] <= 10^6

2023-09-22
392. Is Subsequence

Topic: Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
Given two strings s and t, return true if s is a subsequence of t, or false otherwise.

A subsequence of a string is a new string that is formed from the original string by deleting some (can be none) of the characters without disturbing the relative positions of the remaining characters. (i.e., "ace" is a subsequence of "abcde" while "aec" is not).

Example 1:

Input: s = "abc", t = "ahbgdc"
Output: true

Example 2:

Input: s = "axc", t = "ahbgdc"
Output: false

Constraints:

• 0 <= s.length <= 100
• 0 <= t.length <= 10^4
• s and t consist only of lowercase English letters.

Follow up: Suppose there are lots of incoming s, say s_1, s_2, ..., s_k where k >= 10^9, and you want to check one by one to see if t has its subsequence. In this scenario, how would you change your code?

2023-09-23
1048. Longest String Chain

Topic: Array, Hash Table, Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
You are given an array of words where each word consists of lowercase English letters.

word_A is a predecessor of word_B if and only if we can insert exactly one letter anywhere in word_A without changing the order of the other characters to make it equal to word_B.

• For example, "abc" is a predecessor of "abac", while "cba" is not a predecessor of "bcad".

A word chain is a sequence of words [word_1, word_2, ..., word_k] with k >= 1, where word_1 is a predecessor of word_2, word_2 is a predecessor of word_3, and so on. A single word is trivially a word chain with k == 1.

Return the length of the longest possible word chain with words chosen from the given list of words.

Example 1:

Input: words = ["a","b","ba","bca","bda","bdca"]
Output: 4
Explanation: One of the longest word chains is ["a","ba","bda","bdca"].

Example 2:

Input: words = ["xbc","pcxbcf","xb","cxbc","pcxbc"]
Output: 5
Explanation: All the words can be put in a word chain ["xb", "xbc", "cxbc", "pcxbc", "pcxbcf"].

Example 3:

Input: words = ["abcd","dbqca"]
Output: 1
Explanation: The trivial word chain ["abcd"] is one of the longest word chains.
["abcd","dbqca"] is not a valid word chain because the ordering of the letters is changed.

Constraints:

• 1 <= words.length <= 1000
• 1 <= words[i].length <= 16
• words[i] only consists of lowercase English letters.

2023-09-24
799. Champagne Tower

Topic: Dynamic Programming
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
We stack glasses in a pyramid, where the first row has 1 glass, the second row has 2 glasses, and so on until the 100^th row.  Each glass holds one cup of champagne.

Then, some champagne is poured into the first glass at the top.  When the topmost glass is full, any excess liquid poured will fall equally to the glass immediately to the left and right of it.  When those glasses become full, any excess champagne will fall equally to the left and right of those glasses, and so on.  (A glass at the bottom row has its excess champagne fall on the floor.)

For example, after one cup of champagne is poured, the top most glass is full.  After two cups of champagne are poured, the two glasses on the second row are half full.  After three cups of champagne are poured, those two cups become full - there are 3 full glasses total now.  After four cups of champagne are poured, the third row has the middle glass half full, and the two outside glasses are a quarter full, as pictured below.

Image: https://s3-lc-upload.s3.amazonaws.com/uploads/2018/03/09/tower.png

Now after pouring some non-negative integer cups of champagne, return how full the j^th glass in the i^th row is (both i and j are 0-indexed.)

Example 1:

Input: poured = 1, query_row = 1, query_glass = 1
Output: 0.00000
Explanation: We poured 1 cup of champange to the top glass of the tower (which is indexed as (0, 0)). There will be no excess liquid so all the glasses under the top glass will remain empty.

Example 2:

Input: poured = 2, query_row = 1, query_glass = 1
Output: 0.50000
Explanation: We poured 2 cups of champange to the top glass of the tower (which is indexed as (0, 0)). There is one cup of excess liquid. The glass indexed as (1, 0) and the glass indexed as (1, 1) will share the excess liquid equally, and each will get half cup of champange.

Example 3:

Input: poured = 100000009, query_row = 33, query_glass = 17
Output: 1.00000

Constraints:

• 0 <= poured <= 10^9
• 0 <= query_glass <= query_row < 100

2023-09-25
389. Find the Difference

Topic: Hash Table, String, Bit Manipulation, Sorting
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
You are given two strings s and t.

String t is generated by random shuffling string s and then add one more letter at a random position.

Return the letter that was added to t.

Example 1:

Input: s = "abcd", t = "abcde"
Output: "e"
Explanation: 'e' is the letter that was added.

Example 2:

Input: s = "", t = "y"
Output: "y"

Constraints:

• 0 <= s.length <= 1000
• t.length == s.length + 1
• s and t consist of lowercase English letters.

2023-09-26
316. Remove Duplicate Letters

Topic: String, Stack, Greedy, Monotonic Stack
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
Given a string s, remove duplicate letters so that every letter appears once and only once. You must make sure your result is the smallest in lexicographical order among all possible results.

Example 1:

Input: s = "bcabc"
Output: "abc"

Example 2:

Input: s = "cbacdcbc"
Output: "acdb"

Constraints:

• 1 <= s.length <= 10^4
• s consists of lowercase English letters.

Note: This question is the same as 1081: <https://leetcode.com/problems/smallest-subsequence-of-distinct-characters/>

2023-09-27
880. Decoded String at Index

Topic: String, Stack
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
You are given an encoded string s. To decode the string to a tape, the encoded string is read one character at a time and the following steps are taken:

• If the character read is a letter, that letter is written onto the tape.
• If the character read is a digit d, the entire current tape is repeatedly written d - 1 more times in total.

Given an integer k, return the k^th letter (1-indexed) in the decoded string.

Example 1:

Input: s = "leet2code3", k = 10
Output: "o"
Explanation: The decoded string is "leetleetcodeleetleetcodeleetleetcode".
The 10^th letter in the string is "o".

Example 2:

Input: s = "ha22", k = 5
Output: "h"
Explanation: The decoded string is "hahahaha".
The 5^th letter is "h".

Example 3:

Input: s = "a2345678999999999999999", k = 1
Output: "a"
Explanation: The decoded string is "a" repeated 8301530446056247680 times.
The 1^st letter is "a".

Constraints:

• 2 <= s.length <= 100
• s consists of lowercase English letters and digits 2 through 9.
• s starts with a letter.
• 1 <= k <= 10^9
• It is guaranteed that k is less than or equal to the length of the decoded string.
• The decoded string is guaranteed to have less than 2^63 letters.

2023-09-28
905. Sort Array By Parity

Topic: Array, Two Pointers, Sorting
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
Given an integer array nums, move all the even integers at the beginning of the array followed by all the odd integers.

Return any array that satisfies this condition.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [3,1,2,4]
Output: [2,4,3,1]
Explanation: The outputs [4,2,3,1], [2,4,1,3], and [4,2,1,3] would also be accepted.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [0]
Output: [0]

Constraints:

• 1 <= nums.length <= 5000
• 0 <= nums[i] <= 5000

2023-09-29
896. Monotonic Array

Topic: Array
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
An array is monotonic if it is either monotone increasing or monotone decreasing.

An array nums is monotone increasing if for all i <= j, nums[i] <= nums[j]. An array nums is monotone decreasing if for all i <= j, nums[i] >= nums[j].

Given an integer array nums, return true if the given array is monotonic, or false otherwise.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,2,2,3]
Output: true

Example 2:

Input: nums = [6,5,4,4]
Output: true

Example 3:

Input: nums = [1,3,2]
Output: false

Constraints:

• 1 <= nums.length <= 10^5
• -10^5 <= nums[i] <= 10^5

2023-09-30
456. 132 Pattern

Topic: Array, Binary Search, Stack, Monotonic Stack, Ordered Set
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
Given an array of n integers nums, a 132 pattern is a subsequence of three integers nums[i], nums[j] and nums[k] such that i < j < k and nums[i] < nums[k] < nums[j].

Return true if there is a 132 pattern in nums, otherwise, return false.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,2,3,4]
Output: false
Explanation: There is no 132 pattern in the sequence.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [3,1,4,2]
Output: true
Explanation: There is a 132 pattern in the sequence: [1, 4, 2].

Example 3:

Input: nums = [-1,3,2,0]
Output: true
Explanation: There are three 132 patterns in the sequence: [-1, 3, 2], [-1, 3, 0] and [-1, 2, 0].

Constraints:

• n == nums.length
• 1 <= n <= 2 * 10^5
• -10^9 <= nums[i] <= 10^9

2023-10-01
557. Reverse Words in a String III

Topic: Two Pointers, String
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
Given a string s, reverse the order of characters in each word within a sentence while still preserving whitespace and initial word order.

Example 1:

Input: s = "Let's take LeetCode contest"
Output: "s'teL ekat edoCteeL tsetnoc"

Example 2:

Input: s = "God Ding"
Output: "doG gniD"

Constraints:

• 1 <= s.length <= 5 * 10^4
• s contains printable ASCII characters.
• s does not contain any leading or trailing spaces.
• There is at least one word in s.
• All the words in s are separated by a single space.

2023-10-02
2038. Remove Colored Pieces if Both Neighbors are the Same Color

Topic: Math, String, Greedy, Game Theory
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
There are n pieces arranged in a line, and each piece is colored either by 'A' or by 'B'. You are given a string colors of length n where colors[i] is the color of the i^th piece.

Alice and Bob are playing a game where they take alternating turns removing pieces from the line. In this game, Alice moves first.

• Alice is only allowed to remove a piece colored 'A' if both its neighbors are also colored 'A'. She is not allowed to remove pieces that are colored 'B'.
• Bob is only allowed to remove a piece colored 'B' if both its neighbors are also colored 'B'. He is not allowed to remove pieces that are colored 'A'.
• Alice and Bob cannot remove pieces from the edge of the line.
• If a player cannot make a move on their turn, that player loses and the other player wins.

Assuming Alice and Bob play optimally, return true if Alice wins, or return false if Bob wins.

Example 1:

Input: colors = "AAABABB"
Output: true
Explanation:
AAABABB -> AABABB
Alice moves first.
She removes the second 'A' from the left since that is the only 'A' whose neighbors are both 'A'.

Now it's Bob's turn.
Bob cannot make a move on his turn since there are no 'B's whose neighbors are both 'B'.
Thus, Alice wins, so return true.

Example 2:

Input: colors = "AA"
Output: false
Explanation:
Alice has her turn first.
There are only two 'A's and both are on the edge of the line, so she cannot move on her turn.
Thus, Bob wins, so return false.

Example 3:

Input: colors = "ABBBBBBBAAA"
Output: false
Explanation:
ABBBBBBBAAA -> ABBBBBBBAA
Alice moves first.
Her only option is to remove the second to last 'A' from the right.

ABBBBBBBAA -> ABBBBBBAA
Next is Bob's turn.
He has many options for which 'B' piece to remove. He can pick any.

On Alice's second turn, she has no more pieces that she can remove.
Thus, Bob wins, so return false.

Constraints:

• 1 <= colors.length <= 10^5
• colors consists of only the letters 'A' and 'B'

2023-10-03
1512. Number of Good Pairs

Topic: Array, Hash Table, Math, Counting
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
Given an array of integers nums, return the number of good pairs.

A pair (i, j) is called good if nums[i] == nums[j] and i < j.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,2,3,1,1,3]
Output: 4
Explanation: There are 4 good pairs (0,3), (0,4), (3,4), (2,5) 0-indexed.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [1,1,1,1]
Output: 6
Explanation: Each pair in the array are good.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [1,2,3]
Output: 0

Constraints:

• 1 <= nums.length <= 100
• 1 <= nums[i] <= 100

2023-10-04
706. Design HashMap

Topic: Array, Hash Table, Linked List, Design, Hash Function
Difficulty: Easy

Problem:
Design a HashMap without using any built-in hash table libraries.

Implement the MyHashMap class:

• MyHashMap() initializes the object with an empty map.
• void put(int key, int value) inserts a (key, value) pair into the HashMap. If the key already exists in the map, update the corresponding value.
• int get(int key) returns the value to which the specified key is mapped, or -1 if this map contains no mapping for the key.
• void remove(key) removes the key and its corresponding value if the map contains the mapping for the key.

Example 1:

Input
["MyHashMap", "put", "put", "get", "get", "put", "get", "remove", "get"]
[[], [1, 1], [2, 2], [1], [3], [2, 1], [2], [2], [2]]
Output
[null, null, null, 1, -1, null, 1, null, -1]

Explanation
MyHashMap myHashMap = new MyHashMap();
myHashMap.put(1, 1); // The map is now [[1,1]]
myHashMap.put(2, 2); // The map is now [[1,1], [2,2]]
myHashMap.get(1);    // return 1, The map is now [[1,1], [2,2]]
myHashMap.get(3);    // return -1 (i.e., not found), The map is now [[1,1], [2,2]]
myHashMap.put(2, 1); // The map is now [[1,1], [2,1]] (i.e., update the existing value)
myHashMap.get(2);    // return 1, The map is now [[1,1], [2,1]]
myHashMap.remove(2); // remove the mapping for 2, The map is now [[1,1]]
myHashMap.get(2);    // return -1 (i.e., not found), The map is now [[1,1]]

Constraints:

• 0 <= key, value <= 10^6
• At most 10^4 calls will be made to put, get, and remove.

2023-10-05
229. Majority Element II

Topic: Array, Hash Table, Sorting, Counting
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
Given an integer array of size n, find all elements that appear more than ⌊ n/3 ⌋ times.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [3,2,3]
Output: [3]

Example 2:

Input: nums = [1]
Output: [1]

Example 3:

Input: nums = [1,2]
Output: [1,2]

Constraints:

• 1 <= nums.length <= 5 * 10^4
• -10^9 <= nums[i] <= 10^9

Follow up: Could you solve the problem in linear time and in O(1) space?

2023-10-06
343. Integer Break

Topic: Math, Dynamic Programming
Difficulty: Medium

Problem:
Given an integer n, break it into the sum of k positive integers, where k >= 2, and maximize the product of those integers.

Return the maximum product you can get.

Example 1:

Input: n = 2
Output: 1
Explanation: 2 = 1 + 1, 1 × 1 = 1.

Example 2:

Input: n = 10
Output: 36
Explanation: 10 = 3 + 3 + 4, 3 × 3 × 4 = 36.

Constraints:

• 2 <= n <= 58