Leetcode online Find the judge, graph with highest degree

Question

Here is the problem.

In a town, there are N people labelled from 1 to N. There is a rumor that one of these people is secretly the town judge.

If the town judge exists, then:

The town judge trusts nobody.

Everybody (except for the town judge) trusts the town judge.

There is exactly one person that satisfies properties 1 and 2.

You are given trust, an array of pairs trust[i] = [a, b] representing that the person labelled a trusts the person labelled b.

If the town judge exists and can be identified, return the label of the town judge. Otherwise, return -1.

• Example 1:

  Input: N = 2, trust = [[1,2]] Output: 2

• Example 2:

  Input: N = 3, trust = [[1,3],[2,3]] Output: 3

• Example 3:

  Input: N = 3, trust = [[1,3],[2,3],[3,1]] Output: -1

• Example 4:

  Input: N = 3, trust = [[1,2],[2,3]] Output: -1

• Example 5:

  Input: N = 4, trust = [[1,3],[1,4],[2,3],[2,4],[4,3]] Output: 3

Note:

• 1 <= N <= 1000
• trust.length <= 10000
• trust[i] are all different
• trust[i][0] != trust[i][1]
• 1 <= trust[i][0], trust[i][1] <= N

And here is my solution.

(Logic :- Check the degree of every node, +1 for incoming and -1 for outgoing. If any node is having degree as N-1 then that is the node.)

public int findJudge(int N, int[][] trust) {
 // Create graph of N and then check degree, should be N-1
 final int NOT_FOUND = -1;
 final int trustArrayLength = trust.length;
 // Degree array should have value starting from 1 to N+1
 final int[] degreeArray = new int[N + 1];
 for (int i = 0; i < trustArrayLength; i++) {
 int[] itemInTrustArray = trust[i];
 // Since its outbound connection, decrease the degree by 1.
 degreeArray[itemInTrustArray[0]]--;
 // Since its inbound connection, increase the degree by 1.
 degreeArray[itemInTrustArray[1]]++;
 }
 // Now iterate though the degreeArray to find the index having degree as N-1.
 for (int i = 1; i <= N; i++) {
 if (degreeArray[i] == N - 1) {
 return i;
 }
 }
 return NOT_FOUND;
 }

Pleae let me know, the area of improvement.

Answer 1

This is a wonderfully succinct solution. I will make one point:

final int[] degreeArray = new int[N + 1];

This creates a never-used int at degreeArray[0]. I understand that this was a choice so as to be able to use a simple access by value of the trustees:

degreeArray[itemInTrustArray[0]]--;

In the interest of creating the minimum number of objects necessary, and thus using the least memory possible, I would recommend initializing degreeArray to length N

final int[] degreeArray = new int[N];

And then left shifting your insert by value statements

degreeArray[itemInTrustArray[0]--]--;
degreeArray[itemInTrustArray[1]--]++;

and finally updating your final for loop to account for this change to the zero-based indexing inherent to arrays

// Now iterate though the degreeArray to find the index having degree as N-1.
for (int i = 0; i < N; i++) {

Since you are working with int primitives, the math operators here would add only a near-vanishing amount to overall runtime, if that is a concern.

• Mosbius8: Thank you, it was really helpful.
• nitinsridar: Great!! solution as I wondering why everyone is initializing it as N+1
• nitinsridar: Great!! but this doesn't work, can you please share full code