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2517. Maximum Tastiness of Candy Basket

Difficulty Topics

Description

You are given an array of positive integers price where price[i] denotes the price of the ith candy and a positive integer k.

The store sells baskets of k distinct candies. The tastiness of a candy basket is the smallest absolute difference of the prices of any two candies in the basket.

Return the maximum tastiness of a candy basket.

 

Example 1:

Input: price = [13,5,1,8,21,2], k = 3
Output: 8
Explanation: Choose the candies with the prices [13,5,21].
The tastiness of the candy basket is: min(|13 - 5|, |13 - 21|, |5 - 21|) = min(8, 8, 16) = 8.
It can be proven that 8 is the maximum tastiness that can be achieved.

Example 2:

Input: price = [1,3,1], k = 2
Output: 2
Explanation: Choose the candies with the prices [1,3].
The tastiness of the candy basket is: min(|1 - 3|) = min(2) = 2.
It can be proven that 2 is the maximum tastiness that can be achieved.

Example 3:

Input: price = [7,7,7,7], k = 2
Output: 0
Explanation: Choosing any two distinct candies from the candies we have will result in a tastiness of 0.

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= price.length <= 105
  • 1 <= price[i] <= 109
  • 2 <= k <= price.length

Solution

maximum-tastiness-of-candy-basket.py
class Solution:
    def maximumTastiness(self, price: List[int], k: int) -> int:
        N = len(price)
        price.sort()

        def good(mid):
            pre = price[0]
            count = 1

            for i in range(1, N):
                if price[i] - pre >= mid:
                    count += 1
                    pre = price[i]

            return count >= k

        left, right = 0, 10 ** 9
        res = 0
        while left < right:
            mid = left + (right - left) // 2

            if good(mid):
                res = mid
                left = mid + 1
            else:
                right = mid

        return res