LeetCode 1656. Design an Ordered Stream

Description

https://leetcode.com/problems/design-an-ordered-stream/

There is a stream of n (idKey, value) pairs arriving in an arbitrary order, where idKey is an integer between 1 and n and value is a string. No two pairs have the same id.

Design a stream that returns the values in increasing order of their IDs by returning a chunk (list) of values after each insertion. The concatenation of all the chunks should result in a list of the sorted values.

Implement the OrderedStream class:

• OrderedStream(int n) Constructs the stream to take n values.
• String[] insert(int idKey, String value) Inserts the pair (idKey, value) into the stream, then returns the largest possible chunk of currently inserted values that appear next in the order.

Example:

Input
["OrderedStream", "insert", "insert", "insert", "insert", "insert"]
[[5], [3, "ccccc"], [1, "aaaaa"], [2, "bbbbb"], [5, "eeeee"], [4, "ddddd"]]
Output
[null, [], ["aaaaa"], ["bbbbb", "ccccc"], [], ["ddddd", "eeeee"]]

Explanation
// Note that the values ordered by ID is ["aaaaa", "bbbbb", "ccccc", "ddddd", "eeeee"].
OrderedStream os = new OrderedStream(5);
os.insert(3, "ccccc"); // Inserts (3, "ccccc"), returns [].
os.insert(1, "aaaaa"); // Inserts (1, "aaaaa"), returns ["aaaaa"].
os.insert(2, "bbbbb"); // Inserts (2, "bbbbb"), returns ["bbbbb", "ccccc"].
os.insert(5, "eeeee"); // Inserts (5, "eeeee"), returns [].
os.insert(4, "ddddd"); // Inserts (4, "ddddd"), returns ["ddddd", "eeeee"].
// Concatentating all the chunks returned:
// [] + ["aaaaa"] + ["bbbbb", "ccccc"] + [] + ["ddddd", "eeeee"] = ["aaaaa", "bbbbb", "ccccc", "ddddd", "eeeee"]
// The resulting order is the same as the order above.

Constraints:

• 1 <= n <= 1000
• 1 <= id <= n
• value.length == 5
• value consists only of lowercase letters.
• Each call to insert will have a unique id.
• Exactly n calls will be made to insert.

Explanation

There is an underlying pointer pointer in the stream. If pointer matches with the insert value position, move the pointer to the next not null position, and return the sub list from insert position to the pointer’s stopping position. Otherwise, just return the an empty list.

Python Solution

class OrderedStream:

    def __init__(self, n: int):
        self.stream = [None for i in range(n + 1)]
        self.pointer = 1 

    def insert(self, idKey: int, value: str) -> List[str]:
        
        self.stream[idKey] = value

        if self.pointer == idKey:            
            while self.pointer < len(self.stream) and self.stream[self.pointer]:
                self.pointer += 1
                
            return self.stream[idKey : self.pointer]
        else:            
            return []
    
# Your OrderedStream object will be instantiated and called as such:
# obj = OrderedStream(n)
# param_1 = obj.insert(idKey,value)