Number of Unique Flavors After Sharing K Candies
To solve this problem, we need to find the maximum number of unique flavors of candy we can keep after giving k
consecutive candies to our little sister.
We can follow these steps to solve the problem:
- If
k
is 0, return the count of unique flavors in the entirecandies
array since we don’t have to share any candies. - Initialize two pointers
left
andright
both at the beginning of the array. - Use a sliding window approach to iterate through the
candies
array. The window size will bek
, representing the consecutive candies that will be shared. - Keep track of the candy flavors inside the window using a Counter (or dictionary) and the flavors outside the window.
- Slide the window one step at a time, updating the counters for both inside and outside the window accordingly.
- At each step, calculate the number of unique flavors outside the window. Keep track of the maximum number found.
- Return the maximum number of unique flavors found outside the window.
Below is the code:
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This code will return the correct answer for the given problem statement and handles all the edge cases.