Skip to content

215. Kth Largest Element in an Array

Difficulty Topics

Description

Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the kth largest element in the array.

Note that it is the kth largest element in the sorted order, not the kth distinct element.

You must solve it in O(n) time complexity.

 

Example 1:

Input: nums = [3,2,1,5,6,4], k = 2
Output: 5

Example 2:

Input: nums = [3,2,3,1,2,4,5,5,6], k = 4
Output: 4

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= k <= nums.length <= 105
  • -104 <= nums[i] <= 104

Solution

kth-largest-element-in-an-array.py
class Solution:
    def findKthLargest(self, nums: List[int], k: int) -> int:
        heap = []

        for x in nums:
            if len(heap) == k:
                heappushpop(heap, x)
            else:
                heappush(heap, x)

        return heappop(heap)