754. Reach a Number
Description
You are standing at position 0
on an infinite number line. There is a destination at position target
.
You can make some number of moves numMoves
so that:
- On each move, you can either go left or right.
- During the
ith
move (starting fromi == 1
toi == numMoves
), you takei
steps in the chosen direction.
Given the integer target
, return the minimum number of moves required (i.e., the minimum numMoves
) to reach the destination.
Example 1:
Input: target = 2 Output: 3 Explanation: On the 1st move, we step from 0 to 1 (1 step). On the 2nd move, we step from 1 to -1 (2 steps). On the 3rd move, we step from -1 to 2 (3 steps).
Example 2:
Input: target = 3 Output: 2 Explanation: On the 1st move, we step from 0 to 1 (1 step). On the 2nd move, we step from 1 to 3 (2 steps).
Constraints:
-109 <= target <= 109
target != 0
Solutions
Solution 1: Mathematical Analysis
Due to symmetry, each time we can choose to move left or right, so we can take the absolute value of $\textit{target}$.
Define $s$ as the current position, and use the variable $k$ to record the number of moves. Initially, both $s$ and $k$ are $0$.
We keep adding to $s$ in a loop until $s \ge \textit{target}$ and $(s - \textit{target}) \bmod 2 = 0$. At this point, the number of moves $k$ is the answer, and we return it directly.
Why? Because if $s \ge \textit{target}$ and $(s - \textit{target}) \bmod 2 = 0$, we only need to change the sign of the positive integer $\frac{s - \textit{target}}{2}$ to negative, so that $s$ equals $\textit{target}$. Changing the sign of a positive integer essentially means changing the direction of the move, but the actual number of moves remains the same.
The time complexity is $O(\sqrt{\left | \textit{target} \right | })$, and the space complexity is $O(1)$.
Python3
class Solution:
def reachNumber(self, target: int) -> int:
target = abs(target)
s = k = 0
while 1:
if s >= target and (s - target) % 2 == 0:
return k
k += 1
s += k
Java
class Solution {
public int reachNumber(int target) {
target = Math.abs(target);
int s = 0, k = 0;
while (true) {
if (s >= target && (s - target) % 2 == 0) {
return k;
}
++k;
s += k;
}
}
}
C++
class Solution {
public:
int reachNumber(int target) {
target = abs(target);
int s = 0, k = 0;
while (1) {
if (s >= target && (s - target) % 2 == 0) return k;
++k;
s += k;
}
}
};
Go
func reachNumber(target int) int {
if target < 0 {
target = -target
}
var s, k int
for {
if s >= target && (s-target)%2 == 0 {
return k
}
k++
s += k
}
}
JavaScript
/**
* @param {number} target
* @return {number}
*/
var reachNumber = function (target) {
target = Math.abs(target);
let [s, k] = [0, 0];
while (1) {
if (s >= target && (s - target) % 2 == 0) {
return k;
}
++k;
s += k;
}
};