Minimum Path Sum - DP Solution

Another DP problem at LeetCode: https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-path-sum/

Given a m x n grid filled with non-negative numbers, find a path from top left to bottom right which minimizes the sum of all numbers along its path.
Note: You can only move either down or right at any point in time.
Example:
Input:
[
 [1,3,1],
 [1,5,1],
 [4,2,1]
]
Output: 7
Explanation: Because the path 1→3→1→1→1 minimizes the sum.

The hints of DP are clear: problem is asking for a min solution, and the brute-force solution is highly exponential, and since the problem does not specify a boundary for the grid, it might be intractable to do it using brute-force.
DP is a construction approach: instead of thinking like recursion where you think in terms of "base case and induction", think more around a "base case and construction", where you'll construct the solution for 0,1,2,....,n-1,n, and then your final solution is whatever you get for n.
Also keep in mind that (usually) DP will require extra space, in our case here O(n)-space.
With that being said, the solution becomes simple: have a "dp" grid which calculates the best solution thus far for the position dp[r,c]. Build that up until dp[n,m], return that value. O(n)-time. Code is below, cheers, Marcelo.


public class Solution
{
 public int MinPathSum(int[,] grid)
 {
 if (grid == null) return 0;
 int[,] dp = new int[grid.GetLength(0), grid.GetLength(1)];
 //Base
 dp[0, 0] = grid[0, 0];
 for (int r = 1; r < grid.GetLength(0); r++) dp[r, 0] = grid[r, 0] + dp[r - 1, 0]; for (int c = 1; c < grid.GetLength(1); c++) dp[0, c] = grid[0, c] + dp[0, c - 1]; //Construction for (int r = 1; r < dp.GetLength(0); r++) for (int c = 1; c < dp.GetLength(1); c++) dp[r, c] = grid[r, c] + Math.Min(dp[r - 1, c], dp[r, c - 1]); return dp[dp.GetLength(0) - 1, dp.GetLength(1) - 1]; } } 

Comments

  1. Looks good, although it's not necessary to have a 2 dimensional matrix for dp, since we only need 2 rows:

    class Solution {
    public:
    int minPathSum(const vector>& grid) {
    if (grid.empty()) return 0;
    vector prev(grid[0].size()+1), current(grid[0].size()+1);
    for (int i = 0; i < grid[0].size(); ++i) prev[i+1] = prev[i] + grid[0][i];
    for (int i = 1; i < grid.size(); ++i) {
    current[0] = prev[1];
    for (int j = 0; j < grid[i].size(); ++j) {
    current[j+1] = grid[i][j] + min(current[j], prev[j+1]);
    }
    swap(prev, current);
    }
    return prev.back();
    }
    };

    Reply Delete

Post a Comment

[フレーム]

Popular posts from this blog

Quasi FSM (Finite State Machine) problem + Vibe

Not really an FSM problem since the state isn't changing, it is just defined by the current input. Simply following the instructions should do it. Using VSCode IDE you can also engage the help of Cline or Copilot for a combo of coding and vibe coding, see below screenshot. Cheers, ACC. Process String with Special Operations I - LeetCode You are given a string  s  consisting of lowercase English letters and the special characters:  * ,  # , and  % . Build a new string  result  by processing  s  according to the following rules from left to right: If the letter is a  lowercase  English letter append it to  result . A  '*'   removes  the last character from  result , if it exists. A  '#'   duplicates  the current  result  and  appends  it to itself. A  '%'   reverses  the current  result . Return the final string  result  after processing all char...

Shortest Bridge – A BFS Story (with a Twist)

Here's another one from the Google 30 Days challenge on LeetCode — 934. Shortest Bridge . The goal? Given a 2D binary grid where two islands (groups of 1s) are separated by water (0s), flip the fewest number of 0s to 1s to connect them. Easy to describe. Sneaky to implement well. 🧭 My Approach My solution follows a two-phase Breadth-First Search (BFS) strategy: Find and mark one island : I start by scanning the grid until I find the first 1 , then use BFS to mark all connected land cells as 2 . I store their positions for later use. Bridge-building BFS : For each cell in the marked island, I run a BFS looking for the second island. Each BFS stops as soon as it hits a cell with value 1 . The minimum distance across all these searches gives the shortest bridge. πŸ” Code Snippet Here's the core logic simplified: public int ShortestBridge(int[][] grid) { // 1. Mark one island as '2' and gather its coordinates List<int> island = FindAndMark...

Classic Dynamic Programming IX

A bit of vibe code together with OpenAI O3. I asked O3 to just generate the sieve due to laziness. Sieve is used to calculate the first M primes (when I was using Miller-Rabin, was giving me TLE). The DP follows from that in a straightforward way: calculate the numbers from i..n-1, then n follows by calculating the min over all M primes. Notice that I made use of Goldbach's Conjecture as a way to optimize the code too. Goldbach's Conjecture estates that any even number greater than 2 is the sum of 2 primes. The conjecture is applied in the highlighted line. Cheers, ACC. PS: the prompt for the sieve was the following, again using Open AI O3 Advanced Reasoning: " give me a sieve to find the first M prime numbers in C#. The code should produce a List<int> with the first M primes " Minimum Number of Primes to Sum to Target - LeetCode You are given two integers  n  and  m . You have to select a multiset of  prime numbers  from the  first   m  pri...