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Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns in C#

Solution: Smallest Range Covering Elements from K Lists

Explore how to determine the smallest range containing elements from k sorted lists efficiently. Learn to use a min heap to track and update candidate ranges dynamically, maintaining one element per list. Understand how to achieve optimal time and space complexity in solving this problem.

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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 b−a<d−cb−a<d−c, or a<ca < c if b−a==d−cb-a==d-c ...