CodingHardcod-g059

Subject TrieLevel Senior–Staff~35 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given a list of non-negative integers `nums`, return the maximum value of `nums[i] XOR nums[j]` over all pairs i != j. If fewer than two elements are present, return 0. Aim for linear-in-bits time rather than the O(n^2) pairwise scan. `0 <= len(nums) <= 200000`, `0 <= nums[i] < 2^31`.

Implement

max_xor_pair(nums: list[int]) → int

Examples

in[[3,10,5,25,2,8]]out28

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.