Leetcode 264. Ugly Number II

An approach is to check every number if it is an ugly number, until we meet the nth ugly number.

An efficient way is to construct and enumerate all n ugly number and return the last one.

public class Solution {
    public int nthUglyNumber(int n) {
        // an array list to save ugly numbers in sequence
        ArrayList<Integer> uglySeq = new ArrayList<>();
        // the first ugly number is 1
        uglySeq.add(1);
        // i, j, and k are three pointers point to ugly number generated by multiplication of 2, 3, and 5 respectively
        int i = 0, j = 0, k = 0;
        while (uglySeq.size() < n) {
            // choose minimum in order to maintain the sequence
            int nextUgly = Math.min(2*uglySeq.get(i), Math.min(3*uglySeq.get(j), 5*uglySeq.get(k)));
            uglySeq.add(nextUgly);
            
            // update pointers
            if (2*uglySeq.get(i) == nextUgly) i++;
            if (3*uglySeq.get(j) == nextUgly) j++;
            if (5*uglySeq.get(k) == nextUgly) k++;
        }
        
        return uglySeq.get(n-1);
    }
}