LeetCode 969. Pancake Sorting (Medium)

Description:

Given an array A, we can perform a pancake flip: We choose some positive integer k <= A.length, then reverse the order of the first k elements of A. We want to perform zero or more pancake flips (doing them one after another in succession) to sort the array A.

Return the k-values corresponding to a sequence of pancake flips that sort A. Any valid answer that sorts the array within 10 * A.length flips will be judged as correct.

Example 1:

Input: [3,2,4,1]
Output: [4,2,4,3]
Explanation: 
We perform 4 pancake flips, with k values 4, 2, 4, and 3.
Starting state: A = [3, 2, 4, 1]
After 1st flip (k=4): A = [1, 4, 2, 3]
After 2nd flip (k=2): A = [4, 1, 2, 3]
After 3rd flip (k=4): A = [3, 2, 1, 4]
After 4th flip (k=3): A = [1, 2, 3, 4], which is sorted. 

Example 1:

Input: [1,2,3]
Output: []
Explanation: The input is already sorted, so there is no need to flip anything.
Note that other answers, such as [3, 3], would also be accepted.

Note:

1. 1 <= A.length <= 100
2. A[i] is a permutation of [1, 2, ..., A.length]

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Analysis:

We can refer to the strategy that is applied in Bubble Sort.
We use a loop to traverse the given array from the end to the start. In each iteration of the loop, we use $i$ to denote the index of the current element, then we use another loop to find the max element of $A[0\sim i]$, we use $maxIndex$ to denote the index of this max element.
If $i\ne maxIndex$, we do:

1. Reverse the first $(maxIndex+1)$ elements, namely $A[0\sim maxIndex]$ (The max element will be in the $0$-th position of the array).
2. Reverse the first $(i+1)$ elements, namely $A[0\sim i]$ (The max element will be in the $i$-th position of the array).
   

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Code:

class Solution {
    public List<Integer> pancakeSort(int[] A) {
        List<Integer> rs = new ArrayList();
        int N = A.length;
        
        for(int i = N-1; i > 0; i--) {
            int maxIndex = i;
            int max = A[maxIndex];
            for(int j = i-1; j >= 0; j--) {
                if(A[j] > max) {
                    maxIndex = j;
                    max = A[maxIndex];
                }
            }
            // reverse
            if(maxIndex != i) { // The max element of A[0~i] is not A[i].
                // We firstly reverse A[0~maxIndex];
                rs.add(maxIndex+1); 
                reverseArray(A, 0, maxIndex);
                // Then we reverse A[0~i];
                rs.add(i+1);
                reverseArray(A, 0, i);
            }
        }
        
        return rs;
    }
    
    public void reverseArray(int[] A, int start, int end) {
        for(int i = 0; i < start + (end-start+1)/2; i++) {
            int temp = A[start+i];
            A[start+i] = A[end-i];
            A[end-i] = temp;
        }
    }
}