2940. Find Building Where Alice and Bob Can Meet

Problem Link

Description

---

You are given a 0-indexed array heights of positive integers, where heights[i] represents the height of the ith building.

If a person is in building i, they can move to any other building j if and only if i < j and heights[i] < heights[j].

You are also given another array queries where queries[i] = [ai, bi]. On the ith query, Alice is in building ai while Bob is in building bi.

Return an array ans where ans[i] is the index of the leftmost building where Alice and Bob can meet on the ith query. If Alice and Bob cannot move to a common building on query i, set ans[i] to -1.

 

Example 1:

Input: heights = [6,4,8,5,2,7], queries = [[0,1],[0,3],[2,4],[3,4],[2,2]]
Output: [2,5,-1,5,2]
Explanation: In the first query, Alice and Bob can move to building 2 since heights[0] < heights[2] and heights[1] < heights[2]. 
In the second query, Alice and Bob can move to building 5 since heights[0] < heights[5] and heights[3] < heights[5]. 
In the third query, Alice cannot meet Bob since Alice cannot move to any other building.
In the fourth query, Alice and Bob can move to building 5 since heights[3] < heights[5] and heights[4] < heights[5].
In the fifth query, Alice and Bob are already in the same building.  
For ans[i] != -1, It can be shown that ans[i] is the leftmost building where Alice and Bob can meet.
For ans[i] == -1, It can be shown that there is no building where Alice and Bob can meet.

Example 2:

Input: heights = [5,3,8,2,6,1,4,6], queries = [[0,7],[3,5],[5,2],[3,0],[1,6]]
Output: [7,6,-1,4,6]
Explanation: In the first query, Alice can directly move to Bob's building since heights[0] < heights[7].
In the second query, Alice and Bob can move to building 6 since heights[3] < heights[6] and heights[5] < heights[6].
In the third query, Alice cannot meet Bob since Bob cannot move to any other building.
In the fourth query, Alice and Bob can move to building 4 since heights[3] < heights[4] and heights[0] < heights[4].
In the fifth query, Alice can directly move to Bob's building since heights[1] < heights[6].
For ans[i] != -1, It can be shown that ans[i] is the leftmost building where Alice and Bob can meet.
For ans[i] == -1, It can be shown that there is no building where Alice and Bob can meet.

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= heights.length <= 5 * 104
• 1 <= heights[i] <= 109
• 1 <= queries.length <= 5 * 104
• queries[i] = [ai, bi]
• 0 <= ai, bi <= heights.length - 1

Solution

---

Python3

class Solution:
    def leftmostBuildingQueries(self, heights: List[int], queries: List[List[int]]) -> List[int]:
        N = len(heights)
        Q = len(queries)
        res = [-1] * Q
        idx = defaultdict(list)
 
        for qi, (a, b) in enumerate(queries):
            # to maintain a <= b
            if a > b:
                a, b = b, a
            
            if a == b or heights[a] < heights[b]:
                res[qi] = b
            else:
                idx[max(a, b)].append((max(heights[a], heights[b]), qi))
        
        pq = []
        for i, x in enumerate(heights):
            while pq and x > pq[0][0]:
                res[heappop(pq)[1]] = i
            
            for h, j in idx[i]:
                heappush(pq, (h, j))
 
        return res