How should I practice Minimum Difference?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related IBM online assessment problems in FastPrep.

Is Minimum Difference associated with IBM?

FastPrep tags this as a IBM coding interview or online assessment practice problem when the problem catalog has that company context.

Problem · Array

Minimum Difference

Learn this problem

● EasyIBMFULLTIMEOA

See IBM hiring insights

Problem statement

Given a set of distinct measurements taken at different times, find the minimum possible difference between any two measurements. Print all pairs of measurements that have this minimum difference in ascending order, with the pairs' elements ordered ascending. e.g., if a < b, the pair is a b. The values should have a single space between them.

Function

ibmMinimumDifference2(measurements: int[]) → int[][]

Complete the function minimumDifference in the editor.

minimumDifference has the following parameter:

int measurements[n]: an array of integers

Returns

NONE

(NOTE: NONE is specified by the orignal source. BUT, we wouldnt be able to upload the question if it returns nothing, so we made it return a 2D int arr instead :) 🥑 By spike, Dec 2024 🍉

Prints

Print the distinct pairs of measurements that have the minimum absolute difference, displayed in ascending order, with each pair separated by one space on a single line

🦥 Thank spike for the 1011st time! 💝

Examples

Example 1

measurements = [-1, 3, 6, -5, 0]return = [[-1, 0]]

🍓 Source note: Corrected on 2026-07-17. The source overview overlooked the adjacent values -1 and 0.

After sorting, the measurements are [-5, -1, 0, 3, 6]. The smallest adjacent difference is 0 - (-1) = 1, so the only pair with the minimum absolute difference is [-1, 0].

Example 2

measurements = [6, 5, 4, 3, 7]return = [[3, 4],[4, 5],[5, 6],[6, 7]]

The minimum absolute difference is 1, and the pairs with that difference are (3,4), (4,5), (5,6), and (6,7).

Example 3

measurements = [1, 3, 5, 10]return = [[1, 3], [3, 5]]

The minimum absolute difference between any two elements in the array is 2, and there are two such pairs: (1, 3) and (3, 5).

Constraints

2 ≤ n ≤ 10^5
-10^9 ≤ measurements[i] ≤ 10^9