Problem: Combination Sum

Posted by Marcy on February 18, 2015

Question

Given a set of candidate numbers (candidates) (without duplicates) and a target number (target), find all unique combinations in candidates where the candidate numbers sums to target.

The same repeated number may be chosen from candidates unlimited number of times.

Note:

All numbers (including target) will be positive integers. The solution set must not contain duplicate combinations.

Example 1:

Input: candidates = [2,3,6,7], target = 7,
A solution set is:
[
  [7],
  [2,2,3]
]

Example 2:

Input: candidates = [2,3,5], target = 8,
A solution set is:
[
  [2,2,2,2],
  [2,3,3],
  [3,5]
]

Solution

DFS

Code

class Solution {
    public List<List<Integer>> combinationSum(int[] candidates, int target) {
        Arrays.sort(candidates);

        List<List<Integer>> results = new ArrayList<>();
        List<Integer> res = new ArrayList<>();

        dfs(candidates, 0, target, results, res);

        return results;
    }

    public void dfs(int[] candidates, int start, int target, List<List<Integer>> results, List<Integer> res) {
        if(target < 0) return;
        if(target == 0) {
            results.add(new ArrayList<Integer>(res));
            return;
        }

        for(int i=start; i<candidates.length; i++) {
            res.add(candidates[i]);
            dfs(candidates, i, target-candidates[i], results, res);
            res.remove(res.size()-1);
        }
    }
}