Hello there! In this unit, we're offering an engaging coding lesson that highlights the performance efficiencies offered by utilizing efficient data structures in C#. We'll address a list-based problem that requires us to make an optimal choice to minimize the size of our list. Excited? So am I! Let's get started.
In this unit's task, we'll manipulate a list of integers. You are required to construct a C# function titled MinimalMaxBlock()
. This function should accept an array as an input and compute an intriguing property related to contiguous blocks within the array.
More specifically, you must select a particular integer, k
, from the array. Once you've selected k
, the function should remove all occurrences of k
from the array, thereby splitting it into several contiguous blocks or remaining sub-arrays. A unique feature of k
is that it is chosen such that the maximum length among these blocks is minimized.
For instance, consider the list [1, 2, 2, 3, 1, 4, 4, 4, 1, 2, 5]
. If we eliminate all instances of 2 (our k
), the remaining blocks would be [1]
, [3, 1, 4, 4, 4, 1]
, [5]
, with the longest containing 6 elements. Now, if we instead remove all instances of 1, the new remaining blocks would be , , , the longest of which contains 3 elements. As such, the function should return 1 in this case, as it leads to a minimally maximal block length.
