CodingHardcod-g019

Subject Minimum spanning treeLevel Senior–Staff~40 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given n points on a 2D plane as [x, y], the cost to connect two points is their Manhattan distance |x1-x2| + |y1-y2|. Return the minimum total cost to connect all points so that every point is reachable from every other (a minimum spanning tree over the complete graph of pairwise Manhattan distances). If n <= 1 the cost is 0.

Implement

min_connect_cost(points: list[list[int]]) → int

Examples

in[[[0,0],[2,2],[3,10],[5,2],[7,0]]]out20

What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

Learn the concepts

Vibe coding: describe the solution in plain language (or narrate it) and the coach grades your approach. Generating runnable code from your description is coming next.

Run or narrate your approach, then ask the coach.