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Minimum Space Wasted from Packaging

Explore how to solve the minimum space wasted packaging problem by selecting the best supplier's boxes. Understand sorting, binary search, and two-pointer methods to find the optimal box sizes for given packages, achieving efficient and minimal wasted space solutions.

Statement

You have n packages that need to be placed into boxes, with one package per box. There are m suppliers, and each supplier offers boxes of different sizes (with an infinite supply of each size). A package can only fit into a box if the size of the box is greater than or equal to the size of the package.

The sizes of the packages and boxes are provided as follows:

  • The sizes of the packages are given as an integer array, packages, where packages[i] represents the size of the i-th package.

  • The sizes of the boxes offered by the j-th supplier are given in a 2D array, boxes, where boxes[j] is an array of distinct box sizes provided by that supplier.

You want to choose a single supplier and use boxes from them to minimize wasted space. The wasted space for a package is calculated as the difference between the box and package sizes. The total wasted space is the sum of the wasted space for all the packages.

Return the minimum wasted space by selecting the supplier whose boxes result in the least waste, or return 1-1 if it is impossible to fit all the packages using any supplier’s boxes. As the result can be large, return it modulo 109+7 ...