Two Sum Implementation | Dataford Interview Questions

A Juniper Networks telemetry component receives an unsorted array of integer measurements and a target value. Return the indices of two distinct measurements whose values add up to the target.

Use an approach suitable for a single pass through the array. Each input is guaranteed to contain exactly one valid pair, and the same element cannot be used twice.

Formal Specification

Implement two_sum(nums, target).

Input: nums, a list of integers, and target, an integer.
Output: A two-element list containing the zero-based indices [i, j] where i < j and nums[i] + nums[j] == target.
The order of the returned indices must correspond to their positions in nums.

Constraints

2 <= len(nums) <= 10^5
-10^9 <= nums[i] <= 10^9
-10^9 <= target <= 10^9
Exactly one valid pair exists
The input array is not necessarily sorted

Function Signature

def two_sum(nums, target):

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