Suppose we have two lists L1 and L2, we have to find the smallest difference between a number from L1 and a number from L2.
So, if the input is like L1 = [2, 7, 4], L2 = [16, 10, 11], then the output will be 3, as the smallest difference is 10 - 7 = 3.
To solve this, we will follow these steps −
- sort the list L1 and sort the list L2
- ans := infinity
- i := 0, j := 0
- while i < size of L1 and j < size of L2, do
- ans := minimum of ans and |L1[i] - L2[j]|
- if L1[i] < L2[j], then
- i := i + 1
- otherwise,
- j := j + 1
- return ans
Let us see the following implementation to get better understanding −
Example
class Solution: def solve(self, L1, L2): L1.sort() L2.sort() ans = float("inf") i = j = 0 while i < len(L1) and j < len(L2): ans = min(ans, abs(L1[i] - L2[j])) if L1[i] < L2[j]: i += 1 else: j += 1 return ans ob = Solution() L1 = [2, 7, 4] L2 = [16, 10, 11] print(ob.solve(L1, L2))
Input
[2, 7, 4], [16, 10, 11]
Output
3