I was trying to find the time complexity of this nested loop
for (i = 1; i <= n; i++) {
for (j = 1; j <= n; j++) {
n--;
x++;
}
}
If there wasn't a n-- it would be n*n , O(n2) right?
But what if n reduces every time second loop runs?
What's the time complexity and big O of this nested loop?
If I consider n = 5, x equals 4, the second loop runs 4 time
The time complexity of the code is O(n). n is reduced by half for every iteration of the outer loop.
So we have n/2 + n/4 + n/8 + n/16 + ... + n/2^k = O(n)
where k is the number of iterations of the outer loop (basically i).
Note that the time complexity is independent of x.
If there wasn't a
n--it would ben*n, O(n2) right?
Yes
k is the number of iterations of the outer loop.j and n are moving towards each other, so by the time the loop condition j <= n is broken, they will have met in the middle.Another way to see it's O(n): You only enter the inner loop body if j <= n, and since j is positive, n must also be positive. But you decrease n every time, which you can only do O(n) times (where n is the starting value) and still have n positive.
