Minimum candies distribution
Children stand in a line, each with an integer rating. You distribute candies so that every child gets at least one candy and any child with a strictly higher rating than an adjacent neighbor gets strictly more candies than that neighbor. Return the minimum total number of candies needed. The line has at least one child; equal ratings impose no constraint between neighbors.
Implement
candy_distribution(ratings: list[int]) → intExamples
in
[[1,0,2]]out5What 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.
0:00 of about 30 min
solution.py
InputExpectedGot
[[1,0,2]]5not run yetsample