ThreeSumCloest question

ThreeSumCloest question

Introduction

Given an array nums of n integers and an integer target,
find three integers in nums such that the sum is closest to target.
Return the sum of the three integers. You may assume that each input would have exactly one solution.

Example:

Given array nums = [-1, 2, 1, -4], and target = 1.

The sum that is closest to the target is 2. (-1 + 2 + 1 = 2).

Solution 1: Brute force

it should be easy to implement it but the complexity is really high (e.g O(n^3)).

Solution 2 : double pointer and sorting

sorting is pretty essential to this kind of question, since we can pruning many impossible cases.

class Solution {
public:
    	int threeSumClosest(vector<int> &nums,int target)
        {
            //return 0 if the size is less than 3
            if (nums.size()<3)
            {
                return 0;
            }
            //return the sum of the nums if the size is equal to 3
            if (nums.size()==3)
            {
                return nums[0]+nums[1]+nums[2];
            }
            //sorting the nums
            sort(nums.begin(), nums.end());
            //initialize the minimum difference  
            int minDiff = abs(target - nums[0] - nums[1] - nums[2]);
            //return the target if the minimum difference is equal to 0
            if(minDiff == 0)
            {
                return target;
            }
            int diff = 0;
            int currentSum = 0;
            //initialize the result pick up the sum of the first three nums 
            int result = nums[0]+nums[1]+nums[2];
            for(int i = 0; i<nums.size();i++)
            {
                int L = i+1;
                int R = nums.size()-1;
                while(L<R)
                {
                    currentSum = nums[i]+nums[L]+nums[R];
                    diff = abs(target-currentSum);
                    if(diff == 0)
                    {
						return target;
                    }
					if(diff<minDiff)
                    {
						minDiff = diff;
                        result = currentSum;
                    }
                    if(currentSum > target)
                    {
                        R--;
                    }
                    else
                    {
						L++;
                    }
                }
            }
            return result;   
        }
};