846. Hand of Straights

Description

Alice has a hand of cards, given as an array of integers.

Now she wants to rearrange the cards into groups so that each group is size W, and consists of W consecutive cards.

Return true if and only if she can.

Example 1:

Input: hand = [1,2,3,6,2,3,4,7,8], W = 3
Output: true
Explanation: Alice’s hand can be rearranged as [1,2,3],[2,3,4],[6,7,8].
Example 2:

Input: hand = [1,2,3,4,5], W = 4
Output: false
Explanation: Alice’s hand can’t be rearranged into groups of 4.

Note:

1 <= hand.length <= 10000
0 <= hand[i] <= 10^9
1 <= W <= hand.length
Problem URL

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Solution

有个hand数组，表示手中牌，给一个W，让将手中的牌分到大小为W的组中，并且每个组中的数都是连续的。

Approach1:
Using a Tree map to contain the frequency of each card.

1. Count number of different cards to a map c
2. Loop from the smallest card number.
3. Everytime we meet a new card i, we cut off i - i + W - 1 from the counter.
   Time Complexity:
   O(MlogM + MW), where M is the number of different cards.

But when W is very large, this solution could be very slow.

Code

class Solution {
    public boolean isNStraightHand(int[] hand, int W) {
        Map<Integer, Integer> map = new TreeMap<>();
        for (int card : hand){
            map.put(card, map.getOrDefault(card, 0) + 1);
        }
        for (int it : map.keySet()){
            if (map.get(it) > 0){
                for (int i = W - 1; i >= 0; i--){
                    if (map.getOrDefault(it + i, 0) < map.get(it)){
                        return false;
                    }
                    map.put(it + i, map.get(it + i) - map.get(it));
                }
            }
        }
        return true;
    }
}

Time Complexity: O()
Space Complexity: O()

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Review

Approach 2:
What if W is huge, should we cut off card on by one?

Explanation:

1. Count number of different cards to a map c
2. Cur represent current opened straight groups.
3. In a deque start, we record the number of opened a straight group.
4. Loop from the smallest card number.

class Solution {
    public boolean isNStraightHand(int[] hand, int W) {
        Map<Integer, Integer> map = new TreeMap<>();
        for (int card : hand){
            map.put(card, map.getOrDefault(card, 0) + 1);
        }
        Queue<Integer> start = new LinkedList<>();
        int lastChecked = -1, opened = 0;
        for (int it : map.keySet()){
            if (opened > 0 && it > lastChecked + 1 || opened > map.get(it)){
                return false;
            }
            start.add(map.get(it) - opened);
            lastChecked = it;
            opened = map.get(it);
            if (start.size() == W){
                opened -= start.remove();
            }
        }
        return opened == 0;
    }
}