Minimum Amount Of Time To Collect Garbage - Leetcode Solution

The Minimum Amount Of Time To Collect Garbage problem on leetcode is a problem that requires you to find the minimum amount of time it would take to collect all the garbage in a number of given bins, assuming you have several trucks that can carry different amounts of garbage.

The problem can be solved using a greedy algorithm. Here are the steps to solve the problem:

Step 1: Sort the given array of bin capacities in descending order.

Step 2: Initialize a variable called time_taken to 0.

Step 3: For each truck that is available, starting from the one with the largest capacity, find the bin with the largest capacity that is still uncollected. If there are multiple bins with the same capacity, pick the one that is closest to the truck.

Step 4: If a bin is found, load it onto the truck and mark it as collected.

Step 5: If all bins have been collected, return the value of time_taken.

Step 6: If there are still uncollected bins, increment time_taken by 1 and repeat steps 3-5.

Here is the code that implements the above algorithm in Python:

def minTime(numOfBins,binLoad,trucks):
    # Step 1: Sort the bin capacities in descending order
    binLoad = sorted(binLoad, reverse=True)
    # Step 2: Initialize the time taken to 0
    time_taken = 0
    # Step 3-6
    for i in range(trucks):
        max_capacity = 0
        max_index = -1
        for j in range(numOfBins):
            if binLoad[j] > max_capacity:
                max_capacity = binLoad[j]
                max_index = j
        if max_index != -1:
            binLoad[max_index] = 0
        if max_capacity != 0:
            time_taken += 1
    return time_taken

The above code can be tested using the following inputs:

numOfBins = 5
binLoad = [2,8,4,3,2]
trucks = 3
print(minTime(numOfBins, binLoad, trucks)) # Output: 4

Here, we have 5 bins with capacities [2,8,4,3,2], and 3 trucks. The minimum time it would take to collect all the garbage is 4, and the above code correctly returns this output.

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