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Problem: Gas Stations

Medium
30 min
Explore how to solve the Gas Station problem by identifying the starting gas station on a circular route to complete the journey using greedy algorithms. Understand constraints, assess gas and cost arrays, and implement a solution to efficiently find the unique valid start index or determine if it is impossible.

Statement

There are nn gas stations along a circular route, where the amount of gas at the ithi^{th} station is gas[i].

We have a car with an unlimited gas tank, and it costs cost[i] of gas to travel from the ithi^{th} station to the next (i+1)th(i+1)^{th} station. We begin the journey with an empty tank at one of the gas stations.

Find the index of the gas station in the integer array gas such that if we start from that index we may return to the same index by traversing through all the elements, collecting gas[i] and consuming cost[i].

  • If it is not possible, return -1.

  • If there exists such index, it is guaranteed to be unique.

Constraints:

  • gas.length ==== cost.length
  • 1 \leq gas.length, cost.length 103\leq 10^3
  • 0 \leq gas[i], cost[i] 103\leq 10^3
Problem
Ask
Submissions

Problem: Gas Stations

Medium
30 min
Explore how to solve the Gas Station problem by identifying the starting gas station on a circular route to complete the journey using greedy algorithms. Understand constraints, assess gas and cost arrays, and implement a solution to efficiently find the unique valid start index or determine if it is impossible.

Statement

There are nn gas stations along a circular route, where the amount of gas at the ithi^{th} station is gas[i].

We have a car with an unlimited gas tank, and it costs cost[i] of gas to travel from the ithi^{th} station to the next (i+1)th(i+1)^{th} station. We begin the journey with an empty tank at one of the gas stations.

Find the index of the gas station in the integer array gas such that if we start from that index we may return to the same index by traversing through all the elements, collecting gas[i] and consuming cost[i].

  • If it is not possible, return -1.

  • If there exists such index, it is guaranteed to be unique.

Constraints:

  • gas.length ==== cost.length
  • 1 \leq gas.length, cost.length 103\leq 10^3
  • 0 \leq gas[i], cost[i] 103\leq 10^3