Kth Largest Element in an Array LeetCode Solution | Easy Approach

Kth Largest Element in an Array Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the kth largest element in the array.

Note that it is the kth largest element in the sorted order, not the kth distinct element.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [3,2,1,5,6,4], k = 2
Output: 5

Example 2:

Input: nums = [3,2,3,1,2,4,5,5,6], k = 4
Output: 4

Constraints:

• 1 <= k <= nums.length <= 104
• -104 <= nums[i] <= 104

Kth Largest Element in an Array Solutions

✅Time: O(n log k)
✅Space: O(k)

C++

class Solution {
 public:
  int findKthLargest(vector<int>& nums, int k) {
    priority_queue<int, vector<int>, greater<>> minHeap;

    for (const int num : nums) {
      minHeap.push(num);
      if (minHeap.size() > k)
        minHeap.pop();
    }

    return minHeap.top();
  }
};

Java

 class Solution {
  public int findKthLargest(int[] nums, int k) {
    PriorityQueue<Integer> minHeap = new PriorityQueue<>((a, b) -> a - b);

    for (final int num : nums) {
      minHeap.offer(num);
      while (minHeap.size() > k)
        minHeap.poll();
    }

    return minHeap.peek();
  }
}

Python

class Solution:
  def findKthLargest(self, nums: List[int], k: int) -> int:
    minHeap = []

    for num in nums:
      heapq.heappush(minHeap, num)
      if len(minHeap) > k:
        heapq.heappop(minHeap)

    return minHeap[0]

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