3891. Minimum Increase to Maximize Special Indices - Practice Online

You are given an integer array nums of length n.

An index i (0 < i < n - 1) is special if nums[i] > nums[i - 1] and nums[i] > nums[i + 1].

You may perform operations where you choose any index i and increase nums[i] by 1.

Your goal is to:

Maximize the number of special indices.
Minimize the total number of operations required to achieve that maximum.

Return an integer denoting the minimum total number of operations required.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,2,2]

Output: 1

Explanation:

Start with nums = [1, 2, 2].
Increase nums[1] by 1, array becomes [1, 3, 2].
The final array is [1, 3, 2] has 1 special index, which is the maximum achievable.
It is impossible to achieve this number of special indices with fewer operations. Thus, the answer is 1.

Example 2:

Input: nums = [2,1,1,3]

Output: 2

Explanation:

Start with nums = [2, 1, 1, 3].
Perform 2 operations at index 1, array becomes [2, 3, 1, 3].
The final array is [2, 3, 1, 3] has 1 special index, which is the maximum achievable. Thus, the answer is 2.

Example 3:

Input: nums = [5,2,1,4,3]

Output: 4

Explanation:

Start with nums = [5, 2, 1, 4, 3].
Perform 4 operations at index 1, array becomes [5, 6, 1, 4, 3].
The final array is [5, 6, 1, 4, 3] has 2 special indices, which is the maximum achievable. Thus, the answer is 4.

Constraints: