Search⌘ K
AI Features

Solution: Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists

Explore how to determine the smallest range that includes at least one number from each of k sorted lists by leveraging a min heap to dynamically track range boundaries. Understand how maintaining the smallest and largest current values helps find this minimal range efficiently. This lesson guides you through the heap-based solution method, its time and space complexity, and the iterative process of updating the range by advancing through the lists.

Statement

You are given kk sorted lists of integers, nums, where each list in nums is in non-decreasing order. Your task is to find the smallest range that contains at least one element from each of the kk lists.

A range [a,b][a,b] is considered smaller than another range [c,d][c,d] if ...