Sort Array by Parity

https://leetcode.com/problems/sort-array-by-parity/

Question

Given an array A of non-negative integers, return an array consisting of all the even elements of A, followed by all the odd elements of A.

You may return any answer array that satisfies this condition.

Example 1:

Input: [3,1,2,4]
Output: [2,4,3,1]
The outputs [4,2,3,1], [2,4,1,3], and [4,2,1,3] would also be accepted.

Answer

We can sort using the sort function.

class Solution(object):
    def sortArrayByParity(self, A):
        A.sort(key = lambda x: x % 2)
        return A

Or we can write all the even elements first, then write all the odd elements.

class Solution(object):
    def sortArrayByParity(self, A):
        return ([x for x in A if x % 2 == 0] +
                [x for x in A if x % 2 == 1])

Approach 3: In-Place

Intuition

If we want to do the sort in-place, we can use quicksort, a standard textbook algorithm.

Algorithm

We'll maintain two pointers i and j. The loop invariant is everything below i has parity 0 (ie. A[k] % 2 == 0 when k < i), and everything above j has parity 1.

Then, there are 4 cases for (A[i] % 2, A[j] % 2):

• If it is (0, 1), then everything is correct: i++ and j--.

• If it is (1, 0), we swap them so they are correct, then continue.

• If it is (0, 0), only the i place is correct, so we i++ and continue.

• If it is (1, 1), only the j place is correct, so we j-- and continue.

Throughout all 4 cases, the loop invariant is maintained, and j-i is getting smaller. So eventually we will be done with the array sorted as desired.

class Solution(object):
    def sortArrayByParity(self, A):
        i, j = 0, len(A) - 1
        while i < j:
            if A[i] % 2 > A[j] % 2:
                A[i], A[j] = A[j], A[i]

            if A[i] % 2 == 0: i += 1
            if A[j] % 2 == 1: j -= 1

        return A

from here.