How to Solve Time Needed to Buy Tickets Problem
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Time Needed to Buy Tickets
There are n people in a line queuing to buy tickets, where the 0th person is at the front of the line and the (n - 1)th person is at the back of the line. You are given a 0-indexed integer array ticke...
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Understanding the Time Needed to Buy Tickets Problem
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Problem Statement
There are n people in a line queuing to buy tickets, where the 0th person is at the front of the line and the (n - 1)th person is at the back of the line. You are given a 0-indexed integer array tickets of length n where the number of tickets that the ith person would like to buy is tickets[i]. Each person takes exactly 1 second to buy a ticket. A person can only buy 1 ticket at a time and has to go back to the end of the line (which happens instantaneously) in order to buy more tickets. If a person does not have any tickets left to buy, the person will leave the line. Return the time taken for the person initially at position k (0-indexed) to finish buying tickets.
Time Needed to Buy Tickets
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Examples
tickets = [2,3,2], k = 26The queue starts as [2,3,2], where the kth person is underlined. After the person at the front has bought a ticket, the queue becomes [3,2,1] at 1 second. Continuing this process, the queue becomes [2,1,2] at 2 seconds. Continuing this process, the queue becomes [1,2,1] at 3 seconds. Continuing this process, the queue becomes [2,1] at 4 seconds. Note: the person at the front left the queue. Continuing this process, the queue becomes [1,1] at 5 seconds. Continuing this process, the queue becomes [1] at 6 seconds. The kth person has bought all their tickets, so return 6.
tickets = [5,1,1,1], k = 08The queue starts as [5,1,1,1], where the kth person is underlined. After the person at the front has bought a ticket, the queue becomes [1,1,1,4] at 1 second. Continuing this process for 3 seconds, the queue becomes [4] at 4 seconds. Continuing this process for 4 seconds, the queue becomes [] at 8 seconds. The kth person has bought all their tickets, so return 8.
Constraints
n == tickets.length1 <= n <= 1001 <= tickets[i] <= 1000 <= k < nHow Interview Coder Helps with Leetcode Problems
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