Sum of Two Numbers Less Than Target - Amazon Top Interview Questions


Problem Statement :


Given a list of integers nums and an integer target, return the sum of the largest pair of numbers in nums whose sum is less than target. You can assume that there is a solution.

Constraints

2 ≤ n ≤ 100,000 where n is the length of nums

Example 1

Input

nums = [5, 1, 2, 3]
target = 4

Output
3

Explanation

Sum of the largest pair of numbers less than 4 is 1 + 2 = 3.



Solution :



title-img




                        Solution in C++ :

int solve(vector<int>& nums, int target) {
    sort(nums.begin(), nums.end());
    int ret = nums[0] + nums[1];
    assert(ret < target);
    int lhs = 0;
    int rhs = nums.size() - 1;
    while (lhs < rhs) {
        int candSum = nums[lhs] + nums[rhs];
        if (candSum >= target)
            rhs--;
        else {
            ret = max(ret, candSum);
            lhs++;
        }
    }
    return ret;
}
                    


                        Solution in Java :

import java.util.Arrays;

class Solution {
    public int solve(int[] nums, int target) {
        Arrays.sort(nums);
        int i = 0, j = nums.length - 1, wanted = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
        while (i < j) {
            int sum = nums[i] + nums[j];
            if (sum >= target) {
                j--;
            } else {
                i++;
                wanted = (sum > wanted) ? sum : wanted;
            }
        }
        return wanted;
    }
}
                    


                        Solution in Python : 
                            
class Solution:
    def solve(self, nums, target):
        nums.sort()
        p1 = 0
        p2 = len(nums) - 1
        m = -math.inf
        while p1 < p2:
            if nums[p1] + nums[p2] < target:
                m = max(m, nums[p1] + nums[p2])
                p1 += 1
            else:
                p2 -= 1
        return m
                    


View More Similar Problems

Minimum Average Waiting Time

Tieu owns a pizza restaurant and he manages it in his own way. While in a normal restaurant, a customer is served by following the first-come, first-served rule, Tieu simply minimizes the average waiting time of his customers. So he gets to decide who is served first, regardless of how sooner or later a person comes. Different kinds of pizzas take different amounts of time to cook. Also, once h

View Solution →

Merging Communities

People connect with each other in a social network. A connection between Person I and Person J is represented as . When two persons belonging to different communities connect, the net effect is the merger of both communities which I and J belongs to. At the beginning, there are N people representing N communities. Suppose person 1 and 2 connected and later 2 and 3 connected, then ,1 , 2 and 3 w

View Solution →

Components in a graph

There are 2 * N nodes in an undirected graph, and a number of edges connecting some nodes. In each edge, the first value will be between 1 and N, inclusive. The second node will be between N + 1 and , 2 * N inclusive. Given a list of edges, determine the size of the smallest and largest connected components that have or more nodes. A node can have any number of connections. The highest node valu

View Solution →

Kundu and Tree

Kundu is true tree lover. Tree is a connected graph having N vertices and N-1 edges. Today when he got a tree, he colored each edge with one of either red(r) or black(b) color. He is interested in knowing how many triplets(a,b,c) of vertices are there , such that, there is atleast one edge having red color on all the three paths i.e. from vertex a to b, vertex b to c and vertex c to a . Note that

View Solution →

Super Maximum Cost Queries

Victoria has a tree, T , consisting of N nodes numbered from 1 to N. Each edge from node Ui to Vi in tree T has an integer weight, Wi. Let's define the cost, C, of a path from some node X to some other node Y as the maximum weight ( W ) for any edge in the unique path from node X to Y node . Victoria wants your help processing Q queries on tree T, where each query contains 2 integers, L and

View Solution →

Contacts

We're going to make our own Contacts application! The application must perform two types of operations: 1 . add name, where name is a string denoting a contact name. This must store name as a new contact in the application. find partial, where partial is a string denoting a partial name to search the application for. It must count the number of contacts starting partial with and print the co

View Solution →