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Decode the Coding Interview in C++: Real-World Examples

Gas Station

Explore the gas station problem where you determine if a car can complete a circular route starting at one of the stations based on gas and travel cost arrays. Learn to analyze and implement an algorithm that efficiently finds the unique starting station or returns -1 if the trip is impossible. Understand the problem constraints, algorithm intuition, and achieve optimal O(n) time and O(1) space complexity.

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Description

Suppose there are n gas stations identified by integers 0, 1, ..., n-1, where the amount of gas at the ithi^{th} station is gas[i]. Imagine that these gas stations are arranged clockwise in a circle, as shown below.

You have a car with an unlimited gas tank. It costs cost[i] amount of gas to travel from the ithi^{th} station to the (i+1)th(i + 1)^{th} ...