CodingHardcod-g917

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

Question

You are given an n x n binary grid that contains exactly two islands (a group of 1s connected 4-directionally). You may flip 0s to 1s to connect the two islands. Return the smallest number of 0s you must flip to form a single island connecting them. The grid contains exactly two islands.

Implement

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

Examples

in[[[0,1],[1,0]]]out1

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.