HackerRank | Minimum Distances

 We define the distance between two array values as the number of indices between the two values. Given , find the minimum distance between any pair of equal elements in the array. If no such value exists, print .

For example, if , there are two matching pairs of values: . The indices of the 's are  and , so their distance is . The indices of the 's are  and , so their distance is .

Function Description

Complete the minimumDistances function in the editor below. It should return the minimum distance between any two matching elements.

minimumDistances has the following parameter(s):

• a: an array of integers

Input Format

The first line contains an integer , the size of array .
The second line contains  space-separated integers .

Constraints

Output Format

Print a single integer denoting the minimum  in . If no such value exists, print .

Sample Input

6
7 1 3 4 1 7

Sample Output

3

Explanation
Here, we have two options:

•  and  are both , so .
•  and  are both , so .

The answer is .

SOLUTION:

def minimumDistances(a):

    dist = sys.maxsize

    for i in range(n):

        for j in range(i+1, n):

            if a[i] == a[j]:

                dist = min(dist, j-i)

            

    

    return -1 if dist == sys.maxsize else dist