#3471

Find the Largest Almost Missing Integer

Easy
ArrayHash TableHash MapArray
LeetCode ↗

Approaches

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

Intuition

Time O(n)Space O(n)

Use a sliding window to efficiently count occurrences of integers in subarrays of size k without re-evaluating the entire subarray each time.

⚙️

Algorithm

3 steps
  1. 1Step 1: Initialize a frequency map to count occurrences of integers in the first k elements.
  2. 2Step 2: Slide the window across the array, updating counts by removing the leftmost element and adding the new rightmost element.
  3. 3Step 3: Track integers that appear exactly once and return the largest.
solution.py12 lines
1def largest_almost_missing(nums, k):
2    from collections import defaultdict
3    count = defaultdict(int)
4    n = len(nums)
5    for i in range(k): count[nums[i]] += 1
6    result = -1
7    if count[nums[0]] == 1: result = nums[0]
8    for i in range(1, n - k + 1):
9        count[nums[i - 1]] -= 1
10        count[nums[i + k - 1]] += 1
11        if count[nums[i]] == 1: result = max(result, nums[i])
12    return result

Complexity note: The sliding window approach allows us to maintain counts efficiently, leading to linear time complexity.

  • 1Use a sliding window for efficiency.
  • 2Track counts dynamically to avoid redundant calculations.

Solutions and explanations are original Tejav content. Problem titles © LeetCode — use the LeetCode button above for the full problem statement.