2260. Minimum Consecutive Cards to Pick Up

Problem Link

Description

---

You are given an integer array cards where cards[i] represents the value of the ith card. A pair of cards are matching if the cards have the same value.

Return the minimum number of consecutive cards you have to pick up to have a pair of matching cards among the picked cards. If it is impossible to have matching cards, return -1.

 

Example 1:

Input: cards = [3,4,2,3,4,7]
Output: 4
Explanation: We can pick up the cards [3,4,2,3] which contain a matching pair of cards with value 3. Note that picking up the cards [4,2,3,4] is also optimal.

Example 2:

Input: cards = [1,0,5,3]
Output: -1
Explanation: There is no way to pick up a set of consecutive cards that contain a pair of matching cards.

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= cards.length <= 105
• 0 <= cards[i] <= 106

Solution

---

Python3

class Solution:
    def minimumCardPickup(self, cards: List[int]) -> int:
        res = float('inf')
        last = {}
        
        for j, x in enumerate(cards):
            if x in last:
                res = min(res, j - last[x] + 1)
                
            last[x] = j
        
        
        return -1 if res == float('inf') else res