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Triplet Sum Close to Target (medium)

Triplet Sum Close to Target (medium)

Problem Statement

Given an array of unsorted numbers and a target number, find a triplet in the array whose sum is as close to the target number as possible, return the sum of the triplet. If there are more than one such triplet, return the sum of the triplet with the smallest sum.

Example 1:

Input: [-2, 0, 1, 2], target=2
Output: 1
Explanation: The triplet [-2, 1, 2] has the closest sum to the target.

Example 2:

Input: [-3, -1, 1, 2], target=1
Output: 0
Explanation: The triplet [-3, 1, 2] has the closest sum to the target.

Example 3:

Input: [1, 0, 1, 1], target=100
Output: 3
Explanation: The triplet [1, 1, 1] has the closest sum to the target.

Try it yourself

Try solving this question here:

import java.util.*;
class TripletSumCloseToTarget {
  public static int searchTriplet(int[] arr, int targetSum) {
    // TODO: Write your code here
    return -1;
  }
}

Solution

This problem follows the Two Pointers pattern and is quite similar to Triplet Sum to Zero.

We can follow a similar approach to iterate through the array, taking one number at a time. At every ...