Code Room
CodingMediumcod-g1154
Subject Networking protocolsLevel Mid–Senior~22 minCommon in Networking & APIs interviewsIndustries Software development, Technology

Question

Simulate a token-bucket rate limiter. The bucket holds at most 'burst' tokens and refills at 'rate' tokens per second, capped at burst. Requests arrive at the given non-decreasing integer 'timestamps' (seconds). The bucket starts full. For each request, first refill by elapsed*rate since the previous request (clamped to burst), then admit the request if at least one token is available (consuming one) else deny. Return a list of booleans, one per request. An empty timestamp list returns an empty list.

Implement
token_bucket(rate: int, burst: int, timestamps: list[int]) → list[bool]
Examples
in[1,2,[0,0,0]]out[true,true,false]
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.

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.