Back to all solutions
#1769 - Minimum Number of Operations to Move All Balls to Each Box
Problem Description
You have n boxes. You are given a binary string boxes of length n, where boxes[i] is '0' if the ith box is empty, and '1' if it contains one ball.
In one operation, you can move one ball from a box to an adjacent box. Box i is adjacent to box j if abs(i - j) == 1. Note that after doing so, there may be more than one ball in some boxes.
Return an array answer of size n, where answer[i] is the minimum number of operations needed to move all the balls to the ith box.
Each answer[i] is calculated considering the initial state of the boxes.
Solution
/**
* @param {string} boxes
* @return {number[]}
*/
var minOperations = function(boxes) {
const result = new Array(boxes.length).fill(0);
for (let i = 0; i < boxes.length; i++) {
let total = 0;
for (let j = 0; j < boxes.length; j++) {
if (boxes[j] === '1') {
total += Math.abs(j - i);
}
}
result[i] = total;
}
return result;
};