- Difficulty: Medium
- Tags: LeetCode, Medium, Greedy, Array, Binary Search, Sorting, leetcode-2517, O(nlogr), O(1)
Problem
You are given an array of positive integers price
where price[i]
denotes the price of the ith
candy and a positive integer k
.
The store sells baskets of k
distinct candies. The tastiness of a candy basket is the smallest absolute difference of the prices of any two candies in the basket.
Return the maximum tastiness of a candy basket.
Example 1:
Input: price = [13,5,1,8,21,2], k = 3 Output: 8 Explanation: Choose the candies with the prices [13,5,21]. The tastiness of the candy basket is: min(|13 - 5|, |13 - 21|, |5 - 21|) = min(8, 8, 16) = 8. It can be proven that 8 is the maximum tastiness that can be achieved.
Example 2:
Input: price = [1,3,1], k = 2 Output: 2 Explanation: Choose the candies with the prices [1,3]. The tastiness of the candy basket is: min(|1 - 3|) = min(2) = 2. It can be proven that 2 is the maximum tastiness that can be achieved.
Example 3:
Input: price = [7,7,7,7], k = 2 Output: 0 Explanation: Choosing any two distinct candies from the candies we have will result in a tastiness of 0.
Constraints:
2 <= k <= price.length <= 105
1 <= price[i] <= 109