K Pairs with Smallest Sums | Dataford Interview Questions

Find K Pairs with Smallest Sums (LeetCode 373).

Asked in the DSA round 1 stage. Given two ascending sorted integer arrays, return up to k pairs [nums1[i], nums2[j]] with the smallest sums. Preserve duplicate pairs and return them in nondecreasing sum order.

Input and Output

Implement k_smallest_pairs(nums1, nums2, k). Return a list containing at most k pairs. Return [] when either array is empty or k is zero.

Constraints

Both arrays are sorted in nondecreasing order.
0 <= len(nums1), len(nums2) <= 10^4
0 <= k <= 10^4
-10^9 <= nums1[i], nums2[j] <= 10^9
A pair uses one element from each array, and each index pair is distinct.

Function Signature

def k_smallest_pairs(nums1, nums2, k):

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