#1437

Check If All 1's Are at Least Length K Places Away

Easy
ArrayArrayTwo Pointers
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Approaches

Brute ForceOptimal
Complexity Comparison
Brute ForceOptimal Solution
Time
O(n²)
O(n)
Space
O(n)
O(1)
💡

Intuition

Time O(n)Space O(1)

The optimal approach uses a single pass through the array to track the last position of '1'. This reduces the time complexity significantly.

⚙️

Algorithm

4 steps
  1. 1Step 1: Initialize a variable to track the last index of '1' found.
  2. 2Step 2: Loop through the array. When a '1' is found, check the distance from the last '1'.
  3. 3Step 3: If the distance is less than 'k', return false. Update the last index of '1'.
  4. 4Step 4: If the loop completes without returning false, return true.
solution.py10 lines
1# Full working Python code
2
3def k_length_apart(nums, k):
4    last_index = -1
5    for i in range(len(nums)):
6        if nums[i] == 1:
7            if last_index != -1 and i - last_index < k:
8                return False
9            last_index = i
10    return True

Complexity note: The time complexity is O(n) because we only loop through the array once. The space complexity is O(1) since we only use a few variables for tracking.

  • 1Using a single pass reduces time complexity significantly.
  • 2Tracking the last index of '1' helps avoid unnecessary comparisons.

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