FastPrep
Problem · Array

Minimum Operations to Transform Array

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You are given two integer arrays:

  • a with length n
  • b with length n + 1

You may perform the following operations on a:

  • Increment any element by 1.
  • Decrement any element by 1.
  • Copy any current element of a and append the copy to the end of a.

After all operations, the first n positions of a must equal the first n positions of b, and the appended element must equal b[n].

Return the minimum number of operations required.

Examples
01 · Example 1
a = [1]
b = [2,3]
return = 3

Increment 1 to 2, copy the value, then increment the copied value to 3. This takes 3 operations.

02 · Example 2
a = [3,3,3]
b = [3,3,3,3]
return = 1

Copy any existing 3 and append it to the end.

03 · Example 3
a = [5,2,1,4,6]
b = [4,1,5,4,6,7]
return = 8

The first five positions require 6 total increment/decrement operations. Copying a value costs 1; the best copied value can be adjusted to 7 with one additional operation, for a total of 8.

Constraints
  • 1 <= a.length <= 2 * 10^5
  • b.length = a.length + 1
  • -10^9 <= a[i], b[i] <= 10^9
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public long minimumOperationsToTransformArray(int[] a, int[] b) {
  // write your code here
}
a[1]
b[2,3]
expected3
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