Thomas Ngo

Software Engineer

1 minute read

Problem Statement

problem-167

Intuition

My initial thought is to use a two-pointer approach since the array is sorted. Starting with two pointers at the beginning and end of the array, we can adjust the pointers based on the sum of the current pair.

Approach

I will use two pointers, l and r, initialized at the beginning and end of the array, respectively. In each iteration, I will calculate the sum of the numbers at these pointers. If the sum is equal to the target, I will return the indices of the two numbers. If the sum is greater than the target, I will move the right pointer (r) to the left to decrease the sum. If the sum is less than the target, I will move the left pointer (l) to the right to increase the sum. This process will continue until the pointers meet or the target sum is found.

Complexity

  • Time complexity: O(n) - The algorithm uses a two-pointer approach with a single pass through the array.

  • Space complexity: O(1) - The algorithm uses only a constant amount of extra space.

Code

class Solution:
    def twoSum(self, numbers: List[int], target: int) -> List[int]:
        l, r = 0, len(numbers) - 1
        while l < r:
            curr_sum = numbers[l] + numbers[r]
            if curr_sum == target:
                return [l + 1, r + 1]
            elif curr_sum > target:
                r -= 1
            else:
                l += 1

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