Description
A shop is selling candies at a discount. For every two candies sold, the shop gives a third candy for free.
The customer can choose any candy to take away for free as long as the cost of the chosen candy is less than or equal to the minimum cost of the two candies bought.
- For example, if there are
4candies with costs1,2,3, and4, and the customer buys candies with costs2and3, they can take the candy with cost1for free, but not the candy with cost4.
Given a 0-indexed integer array cost, where cost[i] denotes the cost of the ith candy, return the minimum cost of buying all the candies.
Example 1:
Input: cost = [1,2,3] Output: 5 Explanation: We buy the candies with costs 2 and 3, and take the candy with cost 1 for free. The total cost of buying all candies is 2 + 3 = 5. This is the only way we can buy the candies. Note that we cannot buy candies with costs 1 and 3, and then take the candy with cost 2 for free. The cost of the free candy has to be less than or equal to the minimum cost of the purchased candies.
Example 2:
Input: cost = [6,5,7,9,2,2] Output: 23 Explanation: The way in which we can get the minimum cost is described below: - Buy candies with costs 9 and 7 - Take the candy with cost 6 for free - We buy candies with costs 5 and 2 - Take the last remaining candy with cost 2 for free Hence, the minimum cost to buy all candies is 9 + 7 + 5 + 2 = 23.
Example 3:
Input: cost = [5,5] Output: 10 Explanation: Since there are only 2 candies, we buy both of them. There is not a third candy we can take for free. Hence, the minimum cost to buy all candies is 5 + 5 = 10.
Constraints:
1 <= cost.length <= 1001 <= cost[i] <= 100
Solutions
This code calculates the minimum cost to buy a group of items under a "buy two, get one free" deal, where you want to get the most expensive items possible for free. It first sorts the item prices from most expensive to cheapest so that the items can be grouped in threes. Then, it loops through this sorted list and adds up the prices, but cleverly skips adding every third item (at index 2, 5, 8, and so on) because those are the free ones you get with your purchase. Finally, it returns the total sum of the paid items.
/**
* @param {number[]} cost
* @return {number}
*/
var minimumCost = function(cost) {
cost.sort((a, b) => b - a);
let sum = 0;
for (let i = 0; i < cost.length; i++) {
if (i % 3 !== 2) {
sum += cost[i];
}
}
return sum;
};