Given an array of n objects with k different colors (numbered from 1 to k), sort them so that objects of the same color are adjacent, with the colors in the order 1, 2, ... k.
Notice
You are not suppose to use the library's sort function for this problem.
Example
Given colors=[3, 2, 2, 1, 4]
, k=4
, your code should sort colors in-place to [1, 2, 2, 3, 4]
.
Challenge
A rather straight forward solution is a two-pass algorithm using counting sort. That will cost O(k) extra memory. Can you do it without using extra memory?
class Solution{
private:
void swap(vector<int> &nums, int i, int j) {
int tmp = nums[i];
nums[i] = nums[j];
nums[j] = tmp;
}
public:
/**
* @param colors: A list of integer
* @param k: An integer
* @return: nothing
*/
void sortColors2(vector<int> &colors, int k) {
// write your code here
int start = 0;
int end = colors.size()-1;
int count = 0;
while (count < k)
{
int minValue = INT_MAX;
int maxValue = INT_MIN;
for (int i=start; i<=end; i++)
{
minValue = min(minValue, colors[i]);
maxValue = max(maxValue, colors[i]);
}
int frontIdx = start;
int curIdx = start;
int rearIdx = end;
while (curIdx <= rearIdx)
{
if (colors[curIdx] == minValue)
{
swap(colors, curIdx, frontIdx);
frontIdx++;
curIdx++;
}
else if (colors[curIdx] < maxValue)
{
curIdx++;
}
else if (colors[curIdx] == maxValue)
{
swap(colors, curIdx, rearIdx);
rearIdx--;
}
}
count += 2; //每次可以处理当前最大最小的两个数
start = frontIdx;
end = rearIdx;
}
}
};