Find 2 numbers in an unsorted array equal to a given sum

Question

We need to find pair of numbers in an array whose sum is equal to a given value.

A = {6,4,5,7,9,1,2}

Sum = 10 Then the pairs are - {6,4} , {9,1}

I have two solutions for this .

• an O(nlogn) solution - sort + check sum with 2 iterators (beginning and end).
• an O(n) solution - hashing the array. Then checking if sum-hash[i] exists in the hash table or not.

But , the problem is that although the second solution is O(n) time , but uses O(n) space as well.

So , I was wondering if we could do it in O(n) time and O(1) space. And this is NOT homework!

Answer 1

Use in-place radix sort and OP's first solution with 2 iterators, coming towards each other.

If numbers in the array are not some sort of multi-precision numbers and are, for example, 32-bit integers, you can sort them in 2*32 passes using practically no additional space (1 bit per pass). Or 2*8 passes and 16 integer counters (4 bits per pass).

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Details for the 2 iterators solution:

First iterator initially points to first element of the sorted array and advances forward. Second iterator initially points to last element of the array and advances backward.

If sum of elements, referenced by iterators, is less than the required value, advance first iterator. If it is greater than the required value, advance second iterator. If it is equal to the required value, success.

Only one pass is needed, so time complexity is O(n). Space complexity is O(1). If radix sort is used, complexities of the whole algorithm are the same.

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If you are interested in related problems (with sum of more than 2 numbers), see "Sum-subset with a fixed subset size" and "Finding three elements in an array whose sum is closest to an given number".

Answer 2

This is a classic interview question from Microsoft research Asia.
How to Find 2 numbers in an unsorted array equal to a given sum.

[1]brute force solution
This algorithm is very simple. The time complexity is O(N^2)

[2]Using binary search
Using bianry searching to find the Sum-arr[i] with every arr[i], The time complexity can be reduced to O(N*logN)

[3]Using Hash
Base on [2] algorithm and use hash, the time complexity can be reduced to O(N), but this solution will add the O(N) space of hash.

[4]Optimal algorithm:

Pseduo-code:

for(i=0;j=n-1;i<j)
   if(arr[i]+arr[j]==sum) return (i,j);
else if(arr[i]+arr[j]<sum) i++;
else j--;
return(-1,-1);

or

If a[M] + a[m] > I then M--
If a[M] + a[m] < I then m++
If a[M] + a[m] == I you have found it
If m > M, no such numbers exist.

And, Is this quesiton completely solved? No. If the number is N. This problem will become very complex.

The quesiton then:
How can I find all the combination cases with a given number?

This is a classic NP-Complete problem which is called subset-sum.
To understand NP/NPC/NP-Hard you'd better to read some professional books.

References:
[1]http://www.quora.com/Mathematics/How-can-I-find-all-the-combination-cases-with-a-given-number
[2]http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Subset_sum_problem

Answer 3

for (int i=0; i < array.size(); i++){
  int value = array[i];
  int diff = sum - value; 
  if (! hashSet.contains(diffvalue)){
      hashSet.put(value,value);
  } else{
       printf(sum = diffvalue + hashSet.get(diffvalue));
  } 
}

--------
Sum being sum of 2 numbers.

Answer 4

    public void printPairsOfNumbers(int[] a, int sum){
    //O(n2)
    for (int i = 0; i < a.length; i++) {
        for (int j = i+1; j < a.length; j++) {
            if(sum - a[i] == a[j]){
                //match..
                System.out.println(a[i]+","+a[j]);
            }
        }
    }

    //O(n) time and O(n) space
    Set<Integer> cache = new HashSet<Integer>();
    cache.add(a[0]);
    for (int i = 1; i < a.length; i++) {
        if(cache.contains(sum - a[i])){
            //match//
            System.out.println(a[i]+","+(sum-a[i]));
        }else{
            cache.add(a[i]);
        }
    }

}

Answer 5

Create a dictionary with pairs Key (number from the list) and the Value is the number which is necessary to obtain a desired value. Next, check the presence of the pairs of numbers in the list.

def check_sum_in_list(p_list, p_check_sum):
    l_dict = {i: (p_check_sum - i) for i in p_list}
    for key, value in l_dict.items():
        if key in p_list and value in p_list:
            return True
    return False


if __name__ == '__main__':
    l1 = [1, 3, 7, 12, 72, 2, 8]
    l2 = [1, 2, 2, 4, 7, 4, 13, 32]

    print(check_sum_in_list(l1, 10))
    print(check_sum_in_list(l2, 99))

Output:
True
Flase

version 2

import random


def check_sum_in_list(p_list, p_searched_sum):
    print(list(p_list))
    l_dict = {i: p_searched_sum - i for i in set(p_list)}
    for key, value in l_dict.items():
        if key in p_list and value in p_list:
            if p_list.index(key) != p_list.index(value):
                print(key, value)
                return True
    return False


if __name__ == '__main__':
    l1 = []
    for i in range(1, 2000000):
        l1.append(random.randrange(1, 1000))

    j = 0
    i = 9
    while i < len(l1):
        if check_sum_in_list(l1[j:i], 100):
            print('Found')
            break
        else:
            print('Continue searching')
            j = i
            i = i + 10

Output:
...
[154, 596, 758, 924, 797, 379, 731, 278, 992, 167]
Continue searching
[808, 730, 216, 15, 261, 149, 65, 386, 670, 770]
Continue searching
[961, 632, 39, 888, 61, 18, 166, 167, 474, 108]
39 61
Finded
[Finished in 3.9s]

Answer 6

If you assume that the value M to which the pairs are suppose to sum is constant and that the entries in the array are positive, then you can do this in one pass (O(n) time) using M/2 pointers (O(1) space) as follows. The pointers are labeled P1,P2,...,Pk where k=floor(M/2). Then do something like this

for (int i=0; i<N; ++i) {
  int j = array[i];
  if (j < M/2) {
    if (Pj == 0)
      Pj = -(i+1);   // found smaller unpaired
    else if (Pj > 0)
      print(Pj-1,i); // found a pair
      Pj = 0;
  } else
    if (Pj == 0)
      Pj = (i+1);    // found larger unpaired
    else if (Pj < 0)
      print(Pj-1,i); // found a pair
      Pj = 0;
  }
}

You can handle repeated entries (e.g. two 6's) by storing the indices as digits in base N, for example. For M/2, you can add the conditional

  if (j == M/2) {
    if (Pj == 0)
      Pj = i+1;      // found unpaired middle
    else
      print(Pj-1,i); // found a pair
      Pj = 0;
  } 

But now you have the problem of putting the pairs together.