Asteroid Collision

Category

Stack

Checkbox

Difficulty

Medium

Index

Key Ideas

The key idea to solve this problem is to use a stack to simulate the collision of asteroids and determine the final state of the asteroid belt.

Problem Number

735

Problem Summary

The problem "Asteroid Collision" (Problem Number: 735) is a medium difficulty problem in the Stack category. The task is to simulate the collision of asteroids in a given array and determine the final state of the asteroids. Key pitfalls to watch out for include handling the direction of asteroid movement, managing stack operations efficiently, and considering edge cases such as empty arrays and single-element arrays.

Solution Summary

The best solution for the Asteroid Collision problem in LeetCode-75 curated list involves using a stack data structure. The idea is to iterate through the given array of asteroids and simulate their collisions based on their sizes and directions. We can use a stack to keep track of the asteroids that are currently moving towards the right. When encountering an asteroid moving towards the left, we compare its size with the topmost asteroid on the stack. If the left-moving asteroid is larger, it destroys the topmost asteroid on the stack. If they have the same size, both asteroids are destroyed. This process continues until all asteroids have been considered. The final stack represents the remaining asteroids after collision.