20170328-leetcode-452-Minimum Number of Arrows to Burst Balloons

1.Description

There are a number of spherical balloons spread in two-dimensional space. For each balloon, provided input is the start and end coordinates of the horizontal diameter. Since it’s horizontal, y-coordinates don’t matter and hence the x-coordinates of start and end of the diameter suffice. Start is always smaller than end. There will be at most 10⁴ balloons.

An arrow can be shot up exactly vertically from different points along the x-axis. A balloon with x_start and x_end bursts by an arrow shot at x if x_start ≤ x ≤ x_end. There is no limit to the number of arrows that can be shot. An arrow once shot keeps travelling up infinitely. The problem is to find the minimum number of arrows that must be shot to burst all balloons.
Example:

**Input:**
[[10,16], [2,8], [1,6], [7,12]]

**Output:**
2

**Explanation:**
One way is to shoot one arrow for example at x = 6 (bursting the balloons [2,8] and [1,6]) and another arrow at x = 11 (bursting the other two balloons).

解读
给定一对区间【start,end】，代表气球的直径，再给定一个箭的位置，如果箭的位置在气球直径区间内，那么意味着这只箭可以射中该气球，那么现在给出一堆这样的区间，求解最少可以使用多少箭射中全部气球。
2.Solution

class Solution(object):
    def findMinArrowShots(self, points):
        """
        :type points: List[List[int]]
        :rtype: int
        """
        Lth = len(points)
        if Lth == 0: return 0
        points = sorted(points, key=lambda x: x[1])
        end = points[0][1]
        ans = 1
        for i in range(1, Lth):
            if points[i][0] > end:
                ans += 1
                end = points[i][1]
        return ans

分析：首先对区间按照end的大小进行排序，然后遍历，总是比较当前区间的头和上个区间的尾的大小，如果当前区间的头小于上个区间的尾，说明上个区间的箭就可以射中，无需增加箭的数量，否则增加。至于初始值为什么设置为1，因为如果所有的区间至少需要一个箭的时候，无需加1操作，这时候需要返回值为1，也就是说如果point的长度不为0，返回值至少大于1