I solved this question on LeetCode.com:
Alice has a hand of cards, given as an array of integers. Now she wants to rearrange the cards into groups so that each group is size W, and consists of W consecutive cards. Return true if and only if she can. For e.g., for
hand=[1,2,3,6,2,3,4,7,8]andW=3, the answer should betrue.
as:
class Solution {
public:
bool isNStraightHand(vector<int>& nums, int k) {
if(nums.size()%k!=0) return false;
map<int, int> _m;
for(int num: nums) _m[num]++;
while(_m.size()) {
auto it=_m.begin();
int count=1;
int prev=it->first;
while(count<=k) {
it->second--;
if(count>1 && it->first-prev!=1) return false;
else prev=it->first;
count++;
if(it->second==0) {
auto backupIt=it;
_m.erase(backupIt); //am I causing UB here?
}
it++;
}
}
return true;
}
};
This works, but it doesn't look like a sturdy solution. I am curious to know if I am causing Undefined Behavior (UB) when erasing the element above. Earlier, I just had _m.erase(it);, but that wasn't good either. I think so, since the official website says:
References and iterators to the erased elements are invalidated.
so, when I do a it++ in the following line, isn't that invalid? That part in particular can probably be improved.