Code Room
CodingHardcod-g794
Subject BacktrackingLevel Senior–Staff~40 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

A group shares expenses recorded as transactions `[from, to, amount]` meaning person `from` paid person `to` that amount. Compute the minimum number of transactions required to settle all debts so that everyone's net balance is zero. People are labelled by small integer ids; there are at most ~12 people with non-zero net balance after netting. Return the minimum transfer count.

Implement
min_transfers(transactions: list[list[int]]) → int
Examples
in[[[0,1,10],[2,0,5]]]out2
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.