[leetcode] 264. Ugly Number II

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).

这道题是找第n个ugly number，题目难度为Medium。

由于ugly number只有2、3和5三种质因子，所以任意ugly number乘以这三个数也是ugly number，这样我们就可以从1开始逐个生成所有的ugly number，问题的关键是如何找出其中第n大的数字。

尝试从1开始生成递增的ugly number，由于可以乘以三个数（2、3、5），所以需要记录下三个数字在已生成的ugly number中分别已经乘到了什么位置，每次分别拿三个位置的ugly number依次乘以2、3、5，取其中最小的即是下一个ugly number了，同时递增相应的记录位置，这样即可顺次找出第n个ugly number。具体代码：

class Solution {
public:
    int nthUglyNumber(int n) {
        if(n <= 0) return 0;
        vector<int> uglyNum(1, 1);
        int idx1 = 0, idx2 = 0, idx3 = 0;
        for(int i=2; i<=n; ++i) {
            int num = min(uglyNum[idx1]*2, min(uglyNum[idx2]*3, uglyNum[idx3]*5));
            if(num == uglyNum[idx1]*2) idx1++;
            if(num == uglyNum[idx2]*3) idx2++;
            if(num == uglyNum[idx3]*5) idx3++;
            uglyNum.push_back(num);
        }
        return uglyNum[n-1];
    }
};