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Technical Interview : Equilibrium index of an Array
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int equilibrium (int A[], int n){ | |
int sum = 0; | |
int solution = -1; | |
int leftSum = 0; | |
int rightSum = 0; | |
// Calculate the sum of all P in A | |
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) | |
sum += A[i]; | |
// Try to find an equilibrium -> if yes return the first one | |
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++){ | |
rightSum = sum - leftSum - A[i]; | |
if(rightSum == leftSum) | |
return i; | |
leftSum += A[i]; | |
} | |
return -1; | |
} |
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Recently I had a technical interview where I was suppose to solve the problem that I explain below. | |
I show you which was my algorithm, not the best but it works well in most cases. | |
Problem: | |
A zero-indexed array A consisting of N integers is given. An equilibrium index of this array is any integer P such that | |
0 <= P < N and the sum of elements of lower indices is equal to the sum of elements of higher indices. | |
A[0] + A[1] + ... + A[P-1] = A[P+1] + ... + A[N-2] + A[N-1]. | |
Sum of zero elements is assumed to be equal to 0. This can happen if P = 0 or if P = N-1. | |
For example, consider the following array A oonsisting of N = 7 elements: | |
A[0] = -7 A[1] = 1 A[2] = 5 | |
A[3] = 2 A[4] = -4 A[S] = 3 | |
A[6] = 0 | |
P = 3 is an equilibrium index of this array, because: | |
- A[0] + A[1] + A[2] = A[4] + A[S] + A[6] | |
P = 6 is also an equilibrium index, because: | |
- A[0] + A[1] + A[2] + A[3] + A[4] + A[S] = 0 | |
and there are no elements with indices greater than 6. | |
P = 7 is not an equilibrium index, because it does not fulfill the condition 0 <= P < N. | |
Write a function (I chose C implement) | |
int equilibrium(int A[], int n); | |
that, given a zero-indexed array A consisting of N integers, returns any of its equilibrium indices. The function should return -1 if no equilibrium index exists. | |
Assume that: | |
- N is an integer within the range [0..10,000,000]; | |
- each element of array A is an integer within the range [-2,147,483,648.2,147,483,647]. | |
For example, given array A such that | |
A[0] = -7 A[1] = 1 A[2] = 5 | |
A[3] = 2 A[4] = -4 A[5] = 3 | |
A[6] = 0 | |
the function may return 3 or 6, as explained above. | |
Complexity: | |
- expected worst-case time complexity is 0(N); | |
- expected worst-case space complexity is O(N), beyond input storage (not counting the storage required for input arguments). |
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Even if you do use 'long' you will still run into the same problem. Imagine adding 100.000 max-ints into a long. One needs to come up with a smarter solution.