134 Gas Station

There are N gas stations along a circular route, where the amount of gas at station i is gas[i].

You have a car with an unlimited gas tank and it costs cost[i] of gas to travel from station i to its next station (i+1). You begin the journey with an empty tank at one of the gas stations.

Return the starting gas station's index if you can travel around the circuit once, otherwise return -1.

Note:

The solution is guaranteed to be unique.

class Solution {
public:
    int canCompleteCircuit(vector<int> &gas, vector<int> &cost) {
        int i, j, n = gas.size();

        /*
         * If start from i, stop before station x -> no station k from i + 1 to x - 1 can reach x.
         * Bcoz if so, i can reach k and k can reach x, then i reaches x. Contradiction.
         * Thus i can jump directly to x instead of i + 1, bringing complexity from O(n^2) to O(n).
         */
        // start from station i
        for (i = 0; i < n; i += j) {
            int gas_left = 0;
            // forward j stations
            for (j = 1; j <= n; j++) {
                int k = (i + j - 1) % n;
                gas_left += gas[k] - cost[k];
                if (gas_left < 0)
                    break;
            }
            if (j > n)
                return i;
        }

        return -1;
    }
};

这道题有个小hint，那就是如果从一个点i开始不能到达点j，那么在[i+1,j-1]之间也不会存在一个能到点j的点。

因为如果点i能到点k，点k能到点j，那么点i一定能到点j,所以我们就可以一次性从点i跳到点j进行下一次的选点重新开始计算。

如果每次失败时候从下一个点开始搜索那么需要o（f(x)）=o(n*(n-1)/2)=o(n^2),若采用上面的小技巧，如果跳过了k次，那么只需要o（kn） = o(n)时间复杂度。