1996. The Number of Weak Characters in the Game

Problem #1996 (The Number of Weak Characters in the Game | Array, Greedy, Monotonic Stack, Sorting, Stack)

You are playing a game that contains multiple characters, and each of the characters has two main properties: attack and defense. You are given a 2D integer array properties where properties[i] = [attackᵢ, defenseⱼ] represents the properties of the iᵗʰ character in the game.

A character is said to be weak if any other character has both attack and defense levels strictly greater than this character's attack and defense levels. More formally, a character i is said to be weak if there exists another character j where attackⱼ > attackᵢ and defenseⱼ > defenseᵢ.

Return the number of weak characters.

Example 1

Input:

properties = [[5,5],[6,3],[3,6]]

Output:

0

Explanation:

No character has strictly greater attack and defense than the other.

Example 2

Input:

properties = [[2,2],[3,3]]

Output:

1

Explanation:

The first character is weak because the second character has a strictly greater attack and defense.

Example 3

Input:

properties = [[1,5],[10,4],[4,3]]

Output:

1

Explanation:

The third character is weak because the second character has a strictly greater attack and defense.

Constraints

• 2 <= properties.length <= 105
• properties[i].length == 2
• 1 <= attacki, defensei <= 105

Solutions

Sorting

Codes

• Java

class Solution {
    public int numberOfWeakCharacters(int[][] properties) {
        int n = properties.length;
        int count = 0;
        int maxN = Integer.MIN_VALUE;
        Arrays.sort(properties, (a, b) -> a[0] == b[0] ? a[1] - b[1] : b[0] - a[0]);
        for(int i = 0; i < n; i++){
            if(properties[i][1] < maxN)
                count++;
            maxN = Math.max(maxN, properties[i][1]);
        }
        return count;
    }
}

• C++

class Solution {
public:
    static bool compare(vector<int>& a, vector<int>& b){
        if(a[0] == b[0])
            return a[1] < b[1];
        return a[0] > b[0];
    }
    
    int numberOfWeakCharacters(vector<vector<int>>& properties) {
        int n = properties.size();
        int count = 0;
        int maxN = INT_MIN;
        sort(properties.begin(), properties.end(), compare);
        for(int i = 0; i < n; i++){
            if(properties[i][1] < maxN)
                count++;
            maxN = max(maxN, properties[i][1]);
        }
        return count;
    }
};

• Python

class Solution(object):
    def numberOfWeakCharacters(self, properties):
        count = 0
        maxN = ~sys.maxint
        properties.sort(key=lambda x: (-x[0], x[1]))
        for i in range(len(properties)):
            if(properties[i][1] < maxN):
                count+=1
            maxN = max(maxN, properties[i][1])
        return count

Complexity

• Time: O(n log n)
• Space: O(n)