LeetCode 264: Ugly Number II

264. Ugly Number II

Difficulty: Medium
Write a program to find the n-th ugly number.

Ugly numbers are positive numbers whose prime factors only include 2, 3, 5.
For example, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 12 is the sequence of the first 10 ugly numbers.
Note that 1 is typically treated as an ugly number.

Hint:
1.The naive approach is to call isUgly for every number until you reach the nth one. Most numbers are not ugly. Try to focus your effort on generating only the ugly ones.
2.An ugly number must be multiplied by either 2, 3, or 5 from a smaller ugly number.
3.The key is how to maintain the order of the ugly numbers. Try a similar approach of merging from three sorted lists: L1, L2, and L3.
4.Assume you have Uk, the kth ugly number. Then Uk+1 must be Min(L1 * 2, L2 * 3, L3 * 5).

思路

第264题Ugly Number只是判断一个数是否为丑数，本题是找到第n个丑数，如果对每个数进行判断，效率极低。根据丑数的定义，丑数应该是另一个丑数乘以2、3或5的结果，可以创建有n个元素的数组，按序存放丑数。
问题是如何确保数组中的丑数是排好序的。每一个丑数都是前面已生成的丑数乘以2、3或5得到的，使用指针l2、l3和l5分别指向要乘以2、3和5的丑数（初始都为1），那么下一个要生成的丑数为* l2 * 2, * l3 * 3, * l5 * 5中的最小者，最小者对应的指针加一。

代码

[C++]

class Solution {
public:
    int nthUglyNumber(int n) {
        if (n <= 0)
            return 0;
        int *uglynums = new int[n];
        uglynums[0] = 1;
        int *l2, *l3, *l5;
        l2 = l3 = l5 = uglynums;
        for (int i = 1; i < n; ++i) {
            int min = Min(*l2 * 2, *l3 * 3, *l5 * 5);
            uglynums[i] = min;
            if (*l2 * 2 == min)
                ++l2;
            if (*l3 * 3 == min)
                ++l3;
            if (*l5 * 5 == min)
                ++l5;
        }
        int res = uglynums[n - 1];
        delete[] uglynums;
        return res;
    }
    int Min(int a, int b, int c) {
        int res = a < b ? a : b;
        res = res < c ? res : c;
        return res;
    }
};