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Find the Kth Largest Integer in the Array

Difficulty: Medium

Problem Description

You are given an array of strings nums and an integer k. Each string in nums represents an integer without leading zeros. Return the string that represents the kth largest integer in nums. Duplicate numbers should be counted distinctly.

Key Insights

  • The input consists of strings representing integers, which require special handling for sorting and comparison.
  • Sorting the array is a straightforward approach, but care must be taken to handle the string comparison correctly.
  • The kth largest integer can be accessed directly after sorting.

Space and Time Complexity

Time Complexity: O(n log n) - due to sorting the array. Space Complexity: O(n) - for storing the sorted array.

Solution

To solve this problem, we will use a sorting approach. The algorithm follows these steps:

  1. Sort the array of strings based on their numerical value. Since the elements are strings, we will leverage Python's built-in sorting, which can compare string representations of integers correctly.
  2. After sorting, the kth largest integer can be directly accessed using the index len(nums) - k.

Code Solutions

def kthLargestNumber(nums, k):
    # Sort the numbers as strings; Python's sort handles string comparison correctly for numeric values.
    nums.sort(key=lambda x: (len(x), x))  # Sort by length first, then lexicographically.
    # Return the k-th largest number, which is at the index len(nums) - k after sorting.
    return nums[len(nums) - k]
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