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The direction change upon collision does not affect the final time an ant falls off. Therefore, the problem simplifies to determining the maximum time taken by any single ant to reach an edge and fall.
Time Complexity: O(m + k), where m and k are the sizes of the 'left' and 'right' arrays respectively.
Space Complexity: O(1), since we are using a constant amount of extra space.
1function getLastMoment(n, left, right) {
2 let maxTime = 0;
3 left.forEach(pos => { if (pos > maxTime) maxTime = pos; });
4 right.forEach(pos => { if (n - pos > maxTime) maxTime = n - pos; });
5 return maxTime;
6}
7
8let n = 4;
9let left = [4, 3];
10let right = [0, 1];
11let result = getLastMoment(n, left, right);
12This JavaScript solution calculates the maximum distance an ant can travel to the plank's edge by looping through all initial positions. Ants in the left array need time equal to their position, while ants in the right array need time equal to n - their position.
In this approach, consider the fact that when two ants collide and change directions, it is equivalent to them passing through each other unaffected. Hence, it suffices to only measure how long it takes ants to fall off the plank.
Time Complexity: O(m + k) since we traverse both input arrays once.
Space Complexity: O(1) due to no extra memory required except primitives.
Python's mechanism to handle empty lists alongside max helps in implementing the solution with conditional expressions to evaluate the plausible maximum time for both directions of ants falling.