Smallest Difference Code Structure

July 18, 2020 · 1 min read

J. David Martinez

Open DS&A Founder

Here, I think the smallest difference code is more readable but, it might not be following best practices:

def smallestDifference(arrayOne, arrayTwo):
    arrayOne.sort()
    arrayTwo.sort()
    ptrOne = 0
    ptrTwo = 0
    smallest = float("inf")
    current_difference = float("inf")

    while ptrOne < len(arrayOne) and ptrTwo < len(arrayTwo):
        x = arrayOne[ptrOne]
        y = arrayTwo[ptrTwo]

        if x < y:
            current_difference = y - x
            ptrOne += 1
        elif y < x:
            current_difference = x - y
            ptrTwo += 1
        else:
            return [x, y]

        if current_difference < smallest:
            smallest = current_difference
            smallest_pair = [x, y]
    return smallest_pair

This is just my honest opinion 🙂.