Continuous Subarray Sum | Dataford Interview Questions

XYZ's event pipeline stores non-negative event weights in an unsorted array. Given nums and a non-negative target, return the shortest non-empty contiguous subarray whose elements sum exactly to target.

Return the inclusive index pair [start, end]. If multiple windows have the same minimum length, return the one with the smallest start index. Return [] if no valid window exists. The input array must not be modified.

Formal Specification

Input: nums, a list of non-negative integers, and target, a non-negative integer.
Output: A list containing two integers, [start, end], or an empty list.
A valid window satisfies sum(nums[start:end + 1]) == target.
The selected window must be non-empty.

Constraints

1 <= len(nums) <= 10^5
0 <= nums[i] <= 10^9
0 <= target <= 10^14
The input array must not be modified
Return the lexicographically earliest index pair among equal-length windows

Function Signature

def shortest_subarray_sum(nums, target):

Your question is Continuous Subarray Sum. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.

Problem

Formal Specification

Input: nums, a list of non-negative integers, and target, a non-negative integer.
Output: A list containing two integers, [start, end], or an empty list.
A valid window satisfies sum(nums[start:end + 1]) == target.
The selected window must be non-empty.

Constraints

1 <= len(nums) <= 10^5
0 <= nums[i] <= 10^9
0 <= target <= 10^14
The input array must not be modified
Return the lexicographically earliest index pair among equal-length windows

Function Signature

def shortest_subarray_sum(nums, target):

Your question is Continuous Subarray Sum. Start with the requirements in the Question tab.

Run and submit as often as you like. When you're ready, talk me through your approach or go straight to the code.