Minimum Size Subarray Sum

Minimum Size Subarray Sum is a Medium Data Structures and Algorithms interview problem you can solve, run and submit on Thita.ai. It belongs to the Sliding Window pattern, in the Variable Size (Condition-Based) subpattern.

Problem statement

Given an array of positive integers nums and a positive integer target, return the minimal length of a subarray whose sum is greater than or equal to target. If there is no such subarray, return 0 instead.

Example 1:

Input: target = 7, nums = [2,3,1,2,4,3] Output: 2 Explanation: The subarray [4,3] has the minimal length under the problem constraint.

Example 2:

Input: target = 4, nums = [1,4,4] Output: 1

Example 3:

Input: target = 11, nums = [1,1,1,1,1,1,1,1] Output: 0

Constraints:

- 1 <= target <= 109

- 1 <= nums.length <= 105

- 1 <= nums[i] <= 104

Follow up: If you have figured out the O(n) solution, try coding another solution of which the time complexity is O(n log(n)).

Topics and companies

Topics: Array, Binary Search, Sliding Window, Prefix Sum.

Reported in interviews at Goldman Sachs, Amazon, Bloomberg, Facebook, Microsoft, ByteDance.

How to practise Minimum Size Subarray Sum on Thita.ai

Starter code is provided in C, C#, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript and Python. Your solution runs against 5 test cases for this problem, with the AI coach available for a hint when you are stuck rather than a finished answer. The reference solution runs in O(n) time and O(1) space.

Open Minimum Size Subarray Sum in the code editor, or read the Minimum Size Subarray Sum editorial for a worked solution with its approach and complexity analysis.

Where Minimum Size Subarray Sum sits in the DSA pattern sheet

• Sliding Window pattern guide
• Variable Size (Condition-Based) subpattern
• The full DSA patterns sheet
• All coding practice problems

Problems related to Minimum Size Subarray Sum

Other problems that use the same Variable Size (Condition-Based) and Sliding Window techniques:

• Contains Duplicate II — Easy, same subpattern
• Continuous Subarrays — Medium, same subpattern
• Find Longest Special Substring That Occurs Thrice I — Medium, same subpattern
• Frequency of the Most Frequent Element — Medium, same subpattern
• Fruit Into Baskets — Medium, same subpattern
• Longest Continuous Subarray With Absolute Diff Less Than or Equal to Limit — Medium, same subpattern