Greedy Algorithm - Lemonade Change

Palak BansalPalak Bansal
2 min read

At a lemonade stand, each lemonade costs $5. Customers are standing in a queue to buy from you and order one at a time (in the order specified by bills). Each customer will only buy one lemonade and pay with either a $5, $10, or $20 bill. You must provide the correct change to each customer so that the net transaction is that the customer pays $5.

Note that you do not have any change in hand at first.

Given an integer array bills where bills[i] is the bill the i<sup>th</sup> customer pays, return true if you can provide every customer with the correct change, or false otherwise.

Example 1:

Input: bills = [5,5,5,10,20]
Output: true
Explanation: 
From the first 3 customers, we collect three $5 bills in order.
From the fourth customer, we collect a $10 bill and give back a $5.
From the fifth customer, we give a $10 bill and a $5 bill.
Since all customers got correct change, we output true.

Example 2:

Input: bills = [5,5,10,10,20]
Output: false
Explanation: 
From the first two customers in order, we collect two $5 bills.
For the next two customers in order, we collect a $10 bill and give back a $5 bill.
For the last customer, we can not give the change of $15 back because we only have two $10 bills.
Since not every customer received the correct change, the answer is false.

Solution:

/**
 * @param {number[]} bills
 * @return {boolean}
 */
function lemonadeChange(bills) {
    let fiveDollarCount = 0;
    let tenDollarCount = 0;

    for (let bill of bills) {
        if (bill === 5) {
            fiveDollarCount++;
        } else if (bill === 10) {
            if (fiveDollarCount > 0) {
                fiveDollarCount--;
                tenDollarCount++;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
        } else if (bill === 20) {
            if (tenDollarCount > 0 && fiveDollarCount > 0) {
                tenDollarCount--;
                fiveDollarCount--;
            } else if (fiveDollarCount >= 3) {
                fiveDollarCount -= 3;
            } else {
                return false;
            }
        }
    }

    return true;
}

Time Complexity - O(n) (n is the number of customers)

Space Complexity - O(1) (2 variables)

Thank you for reading!

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Written by

Palak Bansal
Palak Bansal

Experienced Frontend Developer with a demonstrated history of working in the financial services industry along with having 5+ years of hands on professional experience efficiently coding websites and applications using modern HTML, CSS and Javascript along with their respective frameworks viz.Vue.JS, React.JS. Instituting new technologies and building easy to use and user-friendly websites is truly a passion of mine. I actively seek out new libraries and stay up-to-date on industry trends and advancements. Translated designs to frontend code along with streamlining existing code to improve site performance. Collaborated with UX designers and Back End Developers to ensure coherence between all parties. Also tested some feature prototypes for bugs and user experience.