135. Candy

Problem Link

Description

---

There are n children standing in a line. Each child is assigned a rating value given in the integer array ratings.

You are giving candies to these children subjected to the following requirements:

• Each child must have at least one candy.
• Children with a higher rating get more candies than their neighbors.

Return the minimum number of candies you need to have to distribute the candies to the children.

 

Example 1:

Input: ratings = [1,0,2]
Output: 5
Explanation: You can allocate to the first, second and third child with 2, 1, 2 candies respectively.

Example 2:

Input: ratings = [1,2,2]
Output: 4
Explanation: You can allocate to the first, second and third child with 1, 2, 1 candies respectively.
The third child gets 1 candy because it satisfies the above two conditions.

 

Constraints:

• n == ratings.length
• 1 <= n <= 2 * 104
• 0 <= ratings[i] <= 2 * 104

Solution

---

Python3

class Solution:
    def candy(self, ratings: List[int]) -> int:
        N = len(ratings)
        candies = [1] * N
        
        for i in range(1, N):
            if ratings[i] > ratings[i - 1]:
                candies[i] = candies[i - 1] + 1
        
        for i in range(N - 2, -1, -1):
            if ratings[i] > ratings[i + 1]:
                candies[i] = max(candies[i], candies[i + 1] + 1)
 
        return sum(candies)