🎯 Day 9 of #100DaysOfCode - Data Structures & Algorithms Challenge 🎯
Today’s challenge was "54. Spiral Matrix" on LeetCode! This problem was a fun and engaging way to practice navigating through 2D arrays in a non-linear fashion by traversing them in a spiral order. 🌪️
🧠 Problem Overview:
The task was to return all elements of an m x n matrix in spiral order—starting from the top-left corner, moving across the matrix in a clockwise direction, layer by layer.
🚀 My Approach:
To solve this, I used a boundary tracking method:
Set Up Boundaries: I defined four boundaries:
startRow and startCol to track the current starting row and column.
endRow and endCol to track the current ending row and column.
Traverse in Layers:
First, I traversed from left to right across the top row, then moved down the last column, next moved right to left across the bottom row, and finally moved up the first column.
After completing one layer of traversal, I shrunk the boundaries inward and repeated the process until all elements were visited.
Count Total Elements: I kept track of the number of elements visited to ensure I didn’t go beyond the matrix bounds.
This approach allows us to traverse the entire matrix efficiently in O(m * n) time, where m is the number of rows and n is the number of columns.
Key Takeaways:
Boundary tracking is a powerful technique when working with 2D arrays. It helps in solving problems where we need to traverse or manipulate data in a specific order.
This problem was a great way to practice array traversal in unconventional ways, and I enjoyed visualizing the spiral pattern as I worked through it.
Another exciting problem checked off in my #100DaysOfCode journey! 💡
#LeetCode #SpiralMatrix #ArrayTraversal #DSA #ProblemSolving #Algorithms #TechJourney #CodingChallenge