Minimum number of operations to make array continuous

Array Hash Table Binary Search Sliding Window

52.1% acceptance

Feb 25, 2026

1989

You are given an integer array nums. In one operation, you can replace any element in nums with any integer. nums is considered continuous if both of the following conditions are fulfilled: All elements in nums are unique. The difference between the maximum element and the minimum element in nums equals nums.length - 1. Return the minimum number of operations to make nums continuous.

Solution

Rust

Time O(n²)

Space O(1)

LeetCode

solution.rs

impl Solution {
  pub fn min_operations(nums: Vec<i32>) -> i32 {
    let n = nums.len();
    let mut sorted = nums.clone();
    sorted.sort();
    sorted.dedup();
    let m = sorted.len();
    let mut best = 0;
    let mut r = 0;
    for l in 0..m {
      while r < m && sorted[r] < sorted[l] + n as i32 {
        r += 1;
      }
      best = best.max(r - l);
    }
    (n - best) as i32
  }
}