Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days

LeetCode Q 1011 - Capacity To Ship Packages Within D Days

A conveyor belt has packages that must be shipped from one port to another within D days.

The i-th package on the conveyor belt has a weight of weights[i]. Each day, we load the ship with packages on the conveyor belt (in the order given by weights). We may not load more weight than the maximum weight capacity of the ship.

Return the least weight capacity of the ship that will result in all the packages on the conveyor belt being shipped within D days.

Example 1:
Input: weights = [1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10], D = 5 ; Output: 15
Explanation:
A ship capacity of 15 is the minimum to ship all the packages in 5 days like this:
1st day: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5
2nd day: 6, 7
3rd day: 8
4th day: 9
5th day: 10
Note that the cargo must be shipped in the order given, so using a ship of capacity 14 and splitting the packages into parts like (2, 3, 4, 5), (1, 6, 7), (8), (9), (10) is not allowed.

Example 2:
Input: weights = [3,2,2,4,1,4], D = 3 ; Output: 6
Explanation:
A ship capacity of 6 is the minimum to ship all the packages in 3 days like this:
1st day: 3, 2
2nd day: 2, 4
3rd day: 1, 4

Example 3:
Input: weights = [1,2,3,1,1], D = 4 ; Output: 3
Explanation:
1st day: 1
2nd day: 2
3rd day: 3
4th day: 1, 1

Note:

• 1 <= D <= weights.length <= 50000
• 1 <= weights[i] <= 500

Solution :

Use Binary Search.

1. Traverse the array, find the lowest and highest boundary of the converyor.
2. Do the Binary Search.

Code:

public int shipWithinDays(int[] weights, int D) {
	
	// step 1
	int left = 0, right = 0;
	for (int weight: weights) {
		left = Math.max(left, weight);
		right += weight;
	}

	// step 2
	while (left < right) {
		int mid = left + (right - left) / 2;
		int currSum = 0, need = 1;
		for (int weight: weights) {
			if (currSum + weight > mid) {
				need++;
				currSum = weight;
			} else {
				currSum += weight;
			}
		}

		if (need > D)  // indicates we need to increase the capacity so that we can decrease the convey times
			left = mid + 1;
		else
			right = mid;
	}

	return left;
}