LeetCode 73: Set Matrix Zeroes

Difficulty: 3

Frequency: 5

Problem:

Given a m x n matrix, if an element is 0, set its entire row and column to 0. Do it in place.

Follow up:

Did you use extra space?
A straight forward solution using O(mn) space is probably a bad idea.
A simple improvement uses O(m + n) space, but still not the best solution.
Could you devise a constant space solution?

Solution:

class Solution {
public:
    void setZeroes(vector<vector<int> > &matrix) {
        // Start typing your C/C++ solution below
        // DO NOT write int main() function
        bool b_first_row_clear = false;
        bool b_first_col_clear = false;
        for (int i = 0; i<matrix[0].size(); i++)
        {
            if (matrix[0][i]==0)
            {
                b_first_row_clear = true;
                break;
            }
        }
        for (int i = 0; i<matrix.size(); i++)
        {
            if (matrix[i][0]==0)
            {
                b_first_col_clear = true;
                break;
            }
        }
        
        for (int i = 0; i<matrix.size(); i++)
        {
            for (int j = 0; j<matrix[i].size(); j++)
            {
                if (matrix[i][j]==0)
                {
                    matrix[0][j] = 0;
                    matrix[i][0] = 0;
                }
            }
        }
        for (int i = 1; i<matrix[0].size(); i++)//Be careful! i starts from 1 NOT 0
        {
            if (matrix[0][i]==0)
            {
                for (int j = 0; j < matrix.size(); j++)
                {
                    matrix[j][i] = 0;
                }
            }
        }
        for (int i = 1; i<matrix.size(); i++)//Be careful! i starts from 1 NOT 0
        {
            if (matrix[i][0]==0)
            {
                for (int j = 0; j < matrix[i].size(); j++)
                {
                    matrix[i][j] = 0;
                }
            }
        }
        if (b_first_row_clear)
        {
            for (int i = 0; i<matrix[0].size(); i++)
                matrix[0][i] = 0;
        }
        if (b_first_col_clear)
        {
            for (int i = 0; i<matrix.size(); i++)
                matrix[i][0] = 0;
        }
    }
};

Notes:

The first solution came to my mind is using a binary number keep the cols and rows that should be set to zero. But it still depends of m and n. When m and n are very large, it will cause overflow.

For this kind of problem like in place. We should first consider if the information we need is a constant number, if it is not, consider using the incoming data itself to memorize the information we need.

In this problem's case, we need to memorize all the cols and rows which should be cleared. It depends on m and n. So we should think about how to use the incoming data itself to store this information.