Amazon Online Assessment (OA) - Slowest Key

Practice here: https://leetcode.com/problems/slowest-key/

Solution and Explanation

This question asks for the key with largest duration releaseTimes[i] - releaseTimes[i - 1]. We can simple loop through each release time and calculate its difference to the previous time. If multiple characters have the same duration, we want to use the lexicographically largest.

class Solution:
  def slowestKey(self, releaseTimes: List[int], keysPressed: str) -> str:
      slowest_key = 'a'
      longest_duration = 0
      n = len(keysPressed)

      for i in range(n):
          pressedTime = releaseTimes[i - 1] if i > 0 else 0
          duration = releaseTimes[i] - pressedTime
          if duration == longest_duration:
              slowest_key = max(slowest_key, keysPressed[i])
          elif duration > longest_duration:
              slowest_key = keysPressed[i]
              longest_duration = duration

      return slowest_key