1984. Minimum Difference Between Highest and Lowest of K Scores

📝 Problem Details

• Title: 1984. Minimum Difference Between Highest and Lowest of K Scores
• Link: https://leetcode.com/problems/minimum-difference-between-highest-and-lowest-of-k-scores/
• Difficulty: Easy
• Tags/Categories: Two-Pointers

💭What Were My Initial Thoughts?

- sort the input array 
- two pointers to efficiently iterate over the input array
- minDiff variable to track and update minimum difference

🤔What Did I Struggle With?

~

💡 Explanation of Solution

~ same as initial thoughts

⌛ Complexity Analysis

Time Complexity: O(n log n) due to initial sorting of the input array

Space Complexity: O(1), no auxilary space used for this problem

💻 Implementation of Solution

class Solution {
 
public:
    int minimumDifference(vector<int>& nums, int k) {
        if(k == 1) return 0;
        sort(nums.begin(), nums.end());
        int minDiff = INT_MAX;
        int left = 0 , right = k-1;
 
        while(right < nums.size()) {
            int diff = nums[right] - nums[left];
            minDiff = min(minDiff, diff);
            left++;
            right++;
        }
        return minDiff;
    }
};