CodingMediumcod-g916

Subject BfsLevel Mid–Senior~25 minCommon in Algorithms & data structures interviewsIndustries Software development

Question

Given an n x n grid where each cell is either land (1) or water (0), find a water cell whose distance to the nearest land cell is maximized, and return that distance. Distance is Manhattan distance via 4-directional steps. If the grid has no land or no water, return -1.

Implement

max_distance_to_land(grid: list[list[int]]) → int

Examples

in[[[1,0,1],[0,0,0],[1,0,1]]]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.

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.