Solution: The Number of the Smallest Unoccupied Chair

Understand how to use min heaps to manage chair assignments as friends arrive and leave, ensuring the smallest chair is always allocated efficiently. Explore sorting, heap operations, and a clear algorithm to solve the smallest unoccupied chair challenge, improving problem-solving skills in coding interviews.

We'll cover the following...

Statement
Solution
- Time complexity
- Space complexity

Statement

At a party, $n$ friends, numbered from $0$ to $n - 1$ , arrive and leave at different times. There are infinitely many chairs, numbered $0$ onwards. Each arriving friend sits on the smallest available chair at that moment.

For example, if chairs $0$ , $1$ , and $5$ are occupied when a friend arrives, they will sit on chair number $2$ .

When a friend leaves, their chair becomes immediately available. If another friend arrives simultaneously, they can take that chair.

You are given a $0$ -indexed $2D$ list ...