This question evaluates algorithm design and array-manipulation skills, focusing on reasoning about constrained transfers of value, invariants, and the minimization of operation counts under a fixed per-operation bound.
You are managing an inventory of products and want to adjust their prices.
There are n products. The price of the i-th product is given by an integer array prices of length n.
You are also given two integers:
k
— the maximum absolute amount by which a product's price can be adjusted (increased or decreased) in a
single
operation.
d
— the
target price difference
threshold.
Your goal is to perform a sequence of allowed operations so that the difference between the highest and lowest prices in the inventory becomes strictly less than d, i.e.:
max(prices) - min(prices) < d
You may perform the following operation any number of times (possibly zero):
x
and
y
such that
1 <= x <= y <= n
.
p
such that
1 <= p <= k
.
prices[x] = prices[x] + p
prices[y] = prices[y] - p
Notes:
x == y
, but then the net change is
+p
and
-p
on the same element, which cancels out and has no effect (so such an operation is useless in practice).
Given:
n
,
prices
of length
n
,
k
and
d
,
find the minimum number of operations required so that after performing these operations, the following holds:
max(prices) - min(prices) < d.
If it is impossible (under the given constraints and allowed operation), specify what value your function should return (e.g., -1), or assume inputs are such that it is always possible.
You may assume, for purposes of algorithm design:
1 <= n <= 10^5
.
1 <= k, d <= 10^9
.
-10^9 <= prices[i] <= 10^9
.
max(prices) - min(prices) < d
.
Design an algorithm efficient enough for n up to about 10^5.