JavaScript Algorithms and Data Structures: Sets - Combination Sum

Combination sum is a problem of finding all possible combinations of a set of numbers that sum up to a given target. Learn how to solve the combination sum problem in JavaScript.

Given a set of candidate numbers (candidates) (without duplicates) and a target number (target), find all unique combinations in candidates where the candidate numbers sums to target.

The same repeated number may be chosen from candidates unlimited number of times.

Note:

• All numbers (including target) will be positive integers.
• The solution set must not contain duplicate combinations.

Examples

Input: candidates = [2,3,6,7], target = 7,

A solution set is:
[
  [7],
  [2,2,3]
]

Input: candidates = [2,3,5], target = 8,

A solution set is:
[
  [2,2,2,2],
  [2,3,3],
  [3,5]
]

Explanations

Since the problem is to get all the possible results, not the best or the number of result, thus we don’t need to consider DP (dynamic programming), backtracking approach using recursion is needed to handle it.

Here is an example of decision tree for the situation when candidates = [2, 3] and target = 6:

                0
              /   \
           +2      +3
          /   \      \
       +2       +3    +3
      /  \     /  \     \
    +2    ✘   ✘   ✘     ✓
   /  \
  ✓    ✘    

References

• LeetCode

The Original Article can be found on https://github.com

#javascript #algorithms #datastructures #sets