花花酱 LeetCode 2260. Minimum Consecutive Cards to Pick Up

You are given an integer array cards where cards[i] represents the value of the ith card. A pair of cards are matching if the cards have the same value.

Return the minimum number of consecutive cards you have to pick up to have a pair of matching cards among the picked cards. If it is impossible to have matching cards, return -1.

Example 1:

Input: cards = [3,4,2,3,4,7]
Output: 4
Explanation: We can pick up the cards [3,4,2,3] which contain a matching pair of cards with value 3. Note that picking up the cards [4,2,3,4] is also optimal.

Example 2:

Input: cards = [1,0,5,3]
Output: -1
Explanation: There is no way to pick up a set of consecutive cards that contain a pair of matching cards.

Constraints:

• 1 <= cards.length <= 105
• 0 <= cards[i] <= 106

Solution: Hashtable

Record the last position of each number,
ans = min{card_i – last[card_i]}

Time complexity: O(n)
Space complexity: O(n)