Compute island size in grid
Company: Apple
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: Medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Given an m x n binary matrix grid of 0s (water) and 1s (land), where an island is a group of 1s connected 4-directionally, implement sizeOfIsland(grid, r, c) that returns the number of cells in the island containing cell (r, c); return 0 if (r, c) is water or out of bounds. You may either mutate grid (e.g., marking visited) or use an auxiliary visited structure—explain your choice. Describe the algorithm (DFS or BFS), clearly state the base cases, and analyze time and space complexity. Follow-up: adapt your solution to compute the size of the largest island in the entire grid.
Quick Answer: This interview question evaluates algorithm design, data structures, correctness, complexity, edge cases, and implementation details in a realistic interview setting. A strong answer for Compute island size in grid states assumptions, handles edge cases, explains trade-offs, and shows how to validate the result clearly.
Solution
# Solution Alignment
The prompt asks for an implementation-level answer. The safest way to present it is to define the state, maintain clear invariants, then walk through complexity and tests.
## Problem Restatement
Given an m x n binary matrix grid of 0s (water) and 1s (land), where an island is a group of 1s connected 4-directionally, implement sizeOfIsland(grid, r, c) that returns the number of cells in the island containing cell (r, c); return 0 if (r, c) is water or out of bounds. You may either mutate grid (e.g., marking visited) or use an auxiliary visited structure—explain your choice. Describe the algorithm (DFS or BFS), clearly state the base cases, and analyze time and space complexity. Follow-up: adapt your solution to compute the size of the largest island in the entire grid.
## Recommended Approach
Model each reachable configuration as a graph state and choose the traversal by edge cost: BFS for unweighted shortest paths, Dijkstra for non-negative weighted paths, or topological DP for DAGs. Track visited states at the correct granularity so cycles do not cause repeated work.
## Correctness
The implementation should maintain an invariant after each loop or operation that directly matches the problem statement. At termination, that invariant implies the returned value has considered every valid candidate exactly once, or has preserved the required data-structure state after every API call.
## Complexity
BFS is O(V + E) time and O(V) space for a standard graph. Expanded-state problems multiply those bounds by the number of state dimensions.
## Edge Cases and Tests
Disconnected graph, source equals target, cycles, duplicate edges, unreachable target, and whether the answer counts nodes, edges, moves, or transfers.