- Difficulty: Medium
- Tags: LeetCode, Medium, Greedy, Array, Hash Table, Two Pointers, Binary Search, Counting, leetcode-2856, Constructive Algorithms, O(n), Freq Table
Problem
Given an integer array num sorted in non-decreasing order.
You can perform the following operation any number of times:
- Choose two indices,
iandj, wherenums[i] < nums[j]. - Then, remove the elements at indices
iandjfromnums. The remaining elements retain their original order, and the array is re-indexed.
Return the minimum length of nums after applying the operation zero or more times.
Example 1:
Input: nums = [1,2,3,4]
Output: 0
Explanation:
Example 2:
Input: nums = [1,1,2,2,3,3]
Output: 0
Explanation:
Example 3:
Input: nums = [1000000000,1000000000]
Output: 2
Explanation:
Since both numbers are equal, they cannot be removed.
Example 4:
Input: nums = [2,3,4,4,4]
Output: 1
Explanation:
Constraints:
1 <= nums.length <= 1051 <= nums[i] <= 109numsis sorted in non-decreasing order.