765. Couples Holding Hands

N couples sit in 2N seats arranged in a row and want to hold hands. We want to know the minimum number of swaps so that every couple is sitting side by side. A swap consists of choosing any two people, then they stand up and switch seats.

The people and seats are represented by an integer from 0 to 2N-1, the couples are numbered in order, the first couple being (0, 1), the second couple being (2, 3), and so on with the last couple being (2N-2, 2N-1).

The couples' initial seating is given by row[i] being the value of the person who is initially sitting in the i-th seat.

Example 1:

Input: row = [0, 2, 1, 3]
Output: 1
Explanation: We only need to swap the second (row[1]) and third (row[2]) person.

Example 2:

Input: row = [3, 2, 0, 1]
Output: 0
Explanation: All couples are already seated side by side.

Note:

  1. len(row) is even and in the range of [4, 60].

  2. row is guaranteed to be a permutation of 0...len(row)-1.

利用數字間的XOR找到該在一起的pair,例如0^0x1之後是1,1^0x1之後是0,所以0和1是一組。和0x1做XOR可以把奇偶數互換。

// Greedy
int minSwapsCouples(vector<int>& row) { // time: O(n^2); space: O(1)
    int res = 0, n = row.size();
    for (int i = 0; i < n - 1; i += 2) {
        if (row[i + 1] == (row[i] ^ 1)) continue;
        ++res;
        for (int j = i + 1; j < n; ++j) {
            if (row[j] == (row[i] ^ 1)) {
                swap(row[i + 1], row[j]);
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return res;
}

原本有獨立的n/2個group,每遇到一個root值不相等的兩個數,就把他們之間連結起來,代表需要這兩個數的group有需要swap,一開始cnt設為n/2,代表有多少個連結起來的group,最後再用n/2減去這個數量就是需要做的交換次數。

概念上類似Union Find,但這個解法是用hashmap來實現。

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