Divide an array into subarrays with minimum cost i

Array Sorting Enumeration

80.5% acceptance

Feb 25, 2026

523

You are given an array of integers nums of length n. The cost of an array is the value of its first element. For example, the cost of [1,2,3] is 1 while the cost of [3,4,1] is 3. You need to divide nums into 3 disjoint contiguous subarrays. Return the minimum possible sum of the cost of these subarrays.

Solution

Rust

Time O(n log n)

Space O(1)

LeetCode

solution.rs

impl Solution {
  pub fn minimum_cost(nums: Vec<i32>) -> i32 {
    let mut rest = nums[1..].to_vec();
    rest.sort();
    nums[0] + rest[0] + rest[1]
  }
}