Maximum Strong Pair XOR I

Problem Description

You are given a 0-indexed integer array nums. A pair of integers x and y is called a strong pair if it satisfies the condition: |x - y| <= min(x, y). You need to select two integers from nums such that they form a strong pair and their bitwise XOR is the maximum among all strong pairs in the array. Return the maximum XOR value out of all possible strong pairs in the array nums.

Key Insights

• A strong pair (x, y) must satisfy the condition that the absolute difference between x and y is less than or equal to the minimum of the two numbers.
• The XOR operation has specific properties that make it useful for maximizing results based on bit patterns.
• Since the constraints are small (1 <= nums.length <= 50 and 1 <= nums[i] <= 100), a brute force approach is feasible.

Space and Time Complexity

Time Complexity: O(n^2)
Space Complexity: O(1)

Solution

To solve the problem, we can utilize a brute force approach by iterating through all possible pairs of integers in the array. For each pair, we check if they form a strong pair according to the defined condition. If they do, we calculate their XOR and keep track of the maximum XOR value found. This approach leverages the simplicity of nested loops since the size of the input is small.

Code Solutions