How should I practice Closest Vehicle and Charger in a Line?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Spotify phone screen problems in FastPrep.

Is Closest Vehicle and Charger in a Line associated with Spotify?

FastPrep tags this as a Spotify phone screen coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Closest Vehicle and Charger in a Line

Spotify● EasyFULLTIMEPHONE SCREEN

Problem statement

A line of cells is given as an array cells. Each value means:

0: an empty cell
1: a vehicle
2: a charger

The distance between two cells is the absolute difference of their indices. Return the smallest distance between any vehicle and any charger. If the line has no vehicle or no charger, return -1.

Function

closestVehicleChargerDistance(cells: int[]) → int

Examples

Example 1

cells = [0,1,0,0,2,0,1]return = 2

The vehicles are at indices 1 and 6, and the charger is at index 4. The distances are 3 and 2, so the answer is 2, from the vehicle at index 6.

Example 2

cells = [2,1]return = 1

The charger at index 0 and the vehicle at index 1 are next to each other.

Example 3

cells = [1,0,1]return = -1

The line has vehicles but no charger, so the answer is -1.

Constraints

1 <= cells.length <= 10^5
0 <= cells[i] <= 2