[LeetCode 475] Heaters

Winter is coming! Your first job during the contest is to design a standard heater with fixed warm radius to warm all the houses.

Now, you are given positions of houses and heaters on a horizontal line, find out minimum radius of heaters so that all houses could be covered by those heaters.

So, your input will be the positions of houses and heaters seperately, and your expected output will be the minimum radius standard of heaters.

Note:

1. Numbers of houses and heaters you are given are non-negative and will not exceed 25000.
2. Positions of houses and heaters you are given are non-negative and will not exceed 10^9.
3. As long as a house is in the heaters' warm radius range, it can be warmed.
4. All the heaters follow your radius standard and the warm radius will the same.

Example 1:

Input: [1,2,3],[2]
Output: 1
Explanation: The only heater was placed in the position 2, and if we use the radius 1 standard, then all the houses can be warmed.

Example 2:

Input: [1,2,3,4],[1,4]
Output: 1
Explanation: The two heater was placed in the position 1 and 4. We need to use radius 1 standard, then all the houses can be warmed.

分析

这道题题目描述不太清楚，给的example也让大家误以为Houses是连续的，其实Houses可能是离散的，最终要求所有的Houses都被Heaters给Cover住。

可以想到每一个House都只需要找到其最近的Heater，其距离最近的Heater就是要求Radius的最小值。所以遍历每一个House，用二分查找法找到其在Heater中的位置，然后计算最近的距离。最终的结果是找到所有最近距离的最大值。

也可以提前对数组进行排序，遍历House[j]的时候，确保当前的Heater[i] >= House[j]，否则就将i向后移动，然后计算 min(heater[i] - house[j], house[j]-heater[j-1])。

Code

class Solution {
public:
    int findRadius(vector<int>& houses, vector<int>& heaters) {
        int length = houses.size();
        if (length == 0)
            return 0;
        
        sort(houses.begin(), houses.end());
        sort(heaters.begin(), heaters.end());
        heaters.push_back(INT_MAX);
        int i = 0; int j = 0;
        int maxRadius = 0;
        while (i < houses.size() && j < heaters.size())
        {
            while (heaters[j] < houses[i])
            {
                j ++;
            }
            if (j == 0)
            {
                maxRadius = max(maxRadius, heaters[j] - houses[i]);
            }
            else 
                maxRadius = max(maxRadius,
                            min(houses[i] - heaters[j-1], heaters[j] - houses[i]));
            i ++;
        }
        return maxRadius;
    }
};

运行效率 

Runtime: 84 ms, faster than 63.73% of C++ online submissions for Heaters.

Memory Usage: 11.8 MB, less than 7.94% of C++ online submissions forHeaters.