Practice/Meta/Leetcode 283. Move Zeroes

Leetcode 283. Move Zeroes

CodingMust

Problem

Given an array of integers nums and a target value target, modify the array in-place so that all occurrences of the target value are moved to the end of the array. The relative order of all other elements must be preserved.

You must solve this without creating a copy of the array. The function should modify the input array directly and return it.

Requirements

1. Modify the array in-place (no extra array allocation)
2. Move all instances of the target value to the end
3. Preserve the relative ordering of non-target elements
4. Optimize for minimal write operations
5. Return the modified array

Constraints

• 1 ≤ nums.length ≤ 10⁴
• -10⁹ ≤ nums[i] ≤ 10⁹
• -10⁹ ≤ target ≤ 10⁹
• Expected time complexity: O(n)
• Expected space complexity: O(1)

Examples

Example 1:

Input: nums = [4, 2, 4, 0, 0, 3, 0, 5, 1, 0], target = 0 Output: [4, 2, 4, 3, 5, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0] Explanation: All zeros are pushed to the end, while other elements maintain their original order (4, 2, 4, 3, 5, 1).

Example 2:

Input: nums = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5], target = 0 Output: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5] Explanation: No target elements exist, so the array remains unchanged.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [5, 5, 5], target = 5 Output: [5, 5, 5] Explanation: All elements are the target, so the array remains unchanged.