LeetCode 75. Sort Colors

描述
Given an array with n objects colored red, white or blue, sort them so that objects of the same color are adjacent, with the colors in the order red, white and blue.

Here, we will use the integers 0, 1, and 2 to represent the color red, white, and blue respectively.

Note:
You are not suppose to use the library’s sort function for this problem.

Follow up:
A rather straight forward solution is a two-pass algorithm using counting sort.
First, iterate the array counting number of 0’s, 1’s, and 2’s, then overwrite array with total number of 0’s, then 1’s and followed by 2’s.

Could you come up with an one-pass algorithm using only constant space?

分析
由于 0, 1, 2 非常紧凑，首先想到计数排序 (counting sort)，但需要扫描两遍，不符合题目要求。
由于只有三种颜色，可以设置两个 index，一个是 red 的 index，一个是 blue 的 index，两边往中 间走。时间复杂度 O(n)，空间复杂度 O(1)。
第 3 种思路，利用快速排序里 partition 的思想，第一次将数组按 0 分割，第二次按 1 分割，排 序完毕，可以推广到 n 种颜色，每种颜色有重复元素的情况。

代码

class Solution {
public:
    void sortColors(vector<int>& nums) {
        const int n = nums.size();
        int red = 0;
        int blue = n - 1;

        for (size_t i = 0; i < blue + 1;) {
            if (nums[i] == 0) 
                swap(nums[i++], nums[red++]);
            else if (nums[i] == 2)
                swap(nums[i], nums[blue--]);
            else
                i++;
        }
    }
};