Diffculty: Hard

4. Median of Two Sorted Arrays

Topic: Array, Binary Search, Divide and Conquer

There are two sorted arrays nums1 and nums2 of size m and n respectively.

Find the median of the two sorted arrays. The overall run time complexity should be O(log (m+n)).

You may assume nums1 and nums2 cannot be both empty.

Example 1:

nums1 = [1, 3]
nums2 = [2]

The median is 2.0

Example 2:

nums1 = [1, 2]
nums2 = [3, 4]

The median is (2 + 3)/2 = 2.5

Approach1

call statistics lib

def findMedian(nums1, nums2):
    nums1 += nums2
    nums1.sort()
    import statistics
    res = statistics.median(nums1)
    return res

Approach2

find the kth smallest number

def findMedian(nums1, nums2):
    

10. Regular Expression Matching

Topic: String, DP, Backtracking

Given an input string (s) and a pattern (p), implement regular expression matching with support for ‘.’ and ‘*‘.

• ’.’ Matches any single character.
• ‘*’ Matches zero or more of the preceding element. The matching should cover the entire input string (not partial).

Note:

• s could be empty and contains only lowercase letters a-z.
• p could be empty and contains only lowercase letters a-z, and characters like . or *.

Example 1:

Input:
s = "aa"
p = "a"
Output: false
Explanation: "a" does not match the entire string "aa".

Example 2:

Input:
s = "aa"
p = "a*"
Output: true
Explanation: '*' means zero or more of the preceding element, 'a'. Therefore, by repeating 'a' once, it becomes "aa".

Example 3:

Input:
s = "ab"
p = ".*"
Output: true
Explanation: ".*" means "zero or more (*) of any character (.)".

Example 4:

Input:
s = "aab"
p = "c*a*b"
Output: true
Explanation: c can be repeated 0 times, a can be repeated 1 time. Therefore, it matches "aab".

Example 5:

Input:
s = "mississippi"
p = "mis*is*p*."
Output: false

Approach1

Approach2

23. Merge k Sorted Lists

Topic: Linked list, Divide an Conquer, Heap

Merge k sorted linked lists and return it as one sorted list. Analyze and describe its complexity.

Example:

Input:
[
  1->4->5,
  1->3->4,
  2->6
]
Output: 1->1->2->3->4->4->5->6

Approach1

Approach2

41. First Missing Positive

Topic: Array

Given an unsorted integer array, find the smallest missing positive integer.

Example 1:

Input: [1,2,0]
Output: 3

Example 2:

Input: [3,4,-1,1]
Output: 2

Example 3:

Input: [7,8,9,11,12]
Output: 1

Note:

Your algorithm should run in O(n) time and uses constant extra space.

Approach1

Approach2