Answer Exact Island-Size Existence Queries
Last updated: August 8, 2026
Quick Overview
The question asks the candidate to devise a solution for answering existence queries regarding exact island sizes in a given grid.
Meta
August 8, 20268
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115 solved
The question asks the candidate to devise a solution for answering existence queries regarding exact island sizes in a given grid.
This question is typically asked during the onsite coding interview round at Meta to assess a candidate's problem-solving skills and their ability to work with algorithms in a grid-based context. The interviewer is evaluating the candidate's understanding of depth-first search (DFS) or breadth-first search (BFS) techniques, as well as their ability to optimize for time and space complexity when handling potentially large datasets.
What the Interviewer Expects
- Clearly explain the approach to solving the problem.
- Implement an efficient algorithm using DFS or BFS.
- Discuss the time and space complexity of the solution.
- Handle edge cases, such as empty grids or grids with no islands.
- Provide a thorough explanation of the code.
Key Topics to Cover
How to Approach This
- Clarify input constraints and edge cases before writing code.
- Walk through your approach verbally and confirm with the interviewer before coding.
- Start with a brute force solution, then optimize. Mention time and space complexity.
- Test your solution with examples, including edge cases like empty input or duplicates.
- Consider common patterns: sliding window, two pointers, hash map, BFS/DFS, dynamic programming.
Possible Follow-up Questions
- How would you modify your solution for larger grids?
- Can you explain the differences between DFS and BFS in this context?
- What optimizations can you implement to improve performance?
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Practice DSA ProblemsSample Answer
Approach
To solve the problem of answering exact island-size existence queries, we can utilize a graph traversal technique such as Depth-First Search (DFS). The main idea is to traverse the grid and identify c...
Algorithm
- Initialize a set to store the sizes of islands.
- Iterate through each cell in the grid.
- If a cell contains land (1) and has not been visited, initiate a DFS from that cell to explore the e...
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