problem749

README

< Previous 　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　　 Next >

749. Contain Virus (Hard)

A virus is spreading rapidly, and your task is to quarantine the infected area by installing walls.

The world is modeled as a 2-D array of cells, where 0 represents uninfected cells, and 1 represents cells contaminated with the virus. A wall (and only one wall) can be installed between any two 4-directionally adjacent cells, on the shared boundary.

Every night, the virus spreads to all neighboring cells in all four directions unless blocked by a wall. Resources are limited. Each day, you can install walls around only one region -- the affected area (continuous block of infected cells) that threatens the most uninfected cells the following night. There will never be a tie.

Can you save the day? If so, what is the number of walls required? If not, and the world becomes fully infected, return the number of walls used.

Example 1:

Input: grid = 
[[0,1,0,0,0,0,0,1],
 [0,1,0,0,0,0,0,1],
 [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1],
 [0,0,0,0,0,0,0,0]]
Output: 10
Explanation:
There are 2 contaminated regions.
On the first day, add 5 walls to quarantine the viral region on the left. The board after the virus spreads is:
[[0,1,0,0,0,0,1,1],
[0,1,0,0,0,0,1,1],
[0,0,0,0,0,0,1,1],
[0,0,0,0,0,0,0,1]]
On the second day, add 5 walls to quarantine the viral region on the right. The virus is fully contained.

Example 2:

Input: grid = 
[[1,1,1],
 [1,0,1],
 [1,1,1]]
Output: 4
Explanation: Even though there is only one cell saved, there are 4 walls built.
Notice that walls are only built on the shared boundary of two different cells.

Example 3:

Input: grid = 
[[1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0],
 [1,0,1,0,1,1,1,1,1],
 [1,1,1,0,0,0,0,0,0]]
Output: 13
Explanation: The region on the left only builds two new walls.

Note:

1. The number of rows and columns of grid will each be in the range [1, 50].
2. Each grid[i][j] will be either 0 or 1.
3. Throughout the described process, there is always a contiguous viral region that will infect strictly more uncontaminated squares in the next round.

Related Topics

[Depth-first Search]

Hints

Hint 1

The implementation is long - we want to perfrom the following steps:

• Find all viral regions (connected components), additionally for each region keeping track of the frontier (neighboring uncontaminated cells), and the perimeter of the region.

• Disinfect the most viral region, adding it's perimeter to the answer.

• Spread the virus in the remaining regions outward by 1 square.