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Grokking the Coding Interview Patterns

Solution: Find K Pairs with Smallest Sums

Explore how to find k pairs with the smallest sums from two sorted integer arrays by applying a k-way merge algorithm. Understand how to use a min heap to efficiently generate pairs without examining all combinations. This lesson helps you implement the solution with optimized time and space complexity, preparing you for coding interviews involving sorted data merging.

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Statement

You are given two integer arrays, list1 and list2, sorted in non-decreasing order, and an integer, k.

A pair (u, v)(u, \space v) is defined as one element uu chosen from list1 and one element vv chosen from list2.

Your task is to return the k pairs (u1, v1),(u2, v2),...,(uk, vk)(u1, \space v1), (u2, \space v2), ..., (uk, \space vk) whose sums u1+v1,u2+v2,...,uk+vku1 + v1, u2 + v2, ..., uk + vk ...