Good evening! Here's our prompt for today.
Recall that a stack is an abstract data type modeling a collection of elements. Its primary operations are push
(which adds an element to the top of the stack) and pop
(which removes the most newest element).
Traditionally, a stack
can easily be implemented in many dynamic languages using an array (and its built-in methods).
1std::stack<int> stack;
2
3stack.push(5);
4stack.push(6);
5stack.push(7);
6std::cout << stack.top(); stack.pop(); // Prints 7
7// Output: 7
8std::cout << stack.top(); stack.pop(); // Prints 6
9// Output: 6
However, let's say we wanted to implement a stack with the following interface, requiring the following methods to be defined. The most important being the last one, min()
- a method that lets us obtain the minimum element at any given time.
push(val)
- add an element on to the top of the stack.
pop(val)
- remove the element at the top of the stack and return it.
peek(val)
- see the element at the top of the stack without removing it.
min()
- get minimum element in stack.

How would you do it, and can you implement it via a MinStack
class? The class should have the following methods. Work off this skeleton:
1class MinStack {
2 constructor() {
3 }
4
5 push(val) {
6 }
7
8 pop() {
9 }
10
11 peek() {
12 }
13
14 min() {
15 }
16}
Can you do call min()
and retrieve it in O(1)
time?
Constraints
- Total number of operations in the stack <=
100000
- The values will be in the range
-1000000000
and1000000000
- Expected time complexity : O(1)
- Expected space complexity : O(n)
Try to solve this here or in Interactive Mode.
How do I practice this challenge?
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class MinStack {
std::vector<int> _stack;
std::vector<int> _minStack;
​
public:
void push(int val) {
// fill in
// solution
}
​
int pop() {
// fill in
// solution
}
​
int peek() {
// fill in
// solution
}
​
int min() {
// fill in
// solution
}
};
Here's our guided, illustrated walk-through.
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