155. Min Stack

Design a stack that supports push, pop, top, and retrieving the minimum element in constant time.

• push(x) -- Push element x onto stack.
• pop() -- Removes the element on top of the stack.
• top() -- Get the top element.

• getMin() -- Retrieve the minimum element in the stack.

Seems easy but has lots of traps

Solution

class MinStack {
    Stack<Integer> stack = new Stack<Integer>();
	Stack<Integer> min = new Stack<Integer>();
	int minv = Integer.MAX_VALUE;

   /*
    First version
    int minValue = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
    public void push(int x){
        if(x < minValue){ // this should be x <= minValue 
            minValue = x; //don't foget this and in while loops don't forget i++
            min.push(x);
        }
        stack.push(x)
    }
    this has a bug when min is empty and push a new element the min stack, right at this time minValue is the old value and cannot be updated so a new element cannot be added into the min stack
   */
	public void push(int x) {
		if (min.isEmpty() || min.peek() >= x) {  
			min.push(x);
		}
		stack.push(x);
	}

	public void pop() {
		if (stack.isEmpty()) {
			return;
		}
		int a = stack.peek();
		int b = min.peek();
		if (a == b) { //at first I wrote if(stack.peek() == min.peek()) this does not work 
		    min.pop(); //becuase peek() returns Integer and you cannot use == to compare the value
		}
		stack.pop();
	}

	public int top() {
		if (stack.isEmpty()) {
			return 0;
		}
		return stack.peek();
	}

	public int getMin() {
		if (min.isEmpty()) {
			return 0;
		}
		return min.peek();
	}
}