2025-09-16 10:01

Status: adult

Tags: leetcode leetcode-medium backtrack Leetcode Backtracking Intro Subsets

Subsets II

Code

class Solution(object):
    def subsetsWithDup(self, nums):
        """
        :type nums: List[int]
        :rtype: List[List[int]]
        """
 
        # backtracking problem 
 
        res, sol = [], []
        nums.sort()
        n = len(nums)
 
        def backtrack(i):
            # base case
            if i == n:
                res.append(sol[:])
                return
 
            # include nums[i]
            sol.append(nums[i])
            backtrack(i + 1)
            sol.pop()
 
            # not include nums[i]
            while i + 1 < n and nums[i] == nums[i + 1]:
                i += 1
 
            backtrack(i + 1)
        
        backtrack(0

• Time complexity: $O(n\ast 2^n)$
• Space complexity:
  • $O(n)$ extra space.
  • $O(2n)$ space for the output list.

Explanation

1. Very similar to Subsets but since there are duplicates, we have to sort nums first
2. Base case: if the index = length of nums
3. Choices:
   1. Include nums[i]: append, backtrack, pop
   2. Not include nums[i]: 2 conditions we have to check:
      1. since there are duplicates, we need to avoid them by checking that $nums[i]$ = $nums[i+1]$ while being sure that i doesn’t go out of bounds.
      2. call backtrack

References

Neetcode