Distance Calculator - Problem

Write a function to calculate the Euclidean distance between two points in 2D space. The distance between points (x1, y1) and (x2, y2) is calculated using the formula:

distance = √((x2 - x1)² + (y2 - y1)²)

The function should take two arrays as input: point1 = [x1, y1] and point2 = [x2, y2], and return the distance as a floating-point number rounded to 2 decimal places.

Extension: The same approach can be easily extended to 3D space using distance = √((x2 - x1)² + (y2 - y1)² + (z2 - z1)²)

Input & Output

Example 1 — Basic 2D Distance

$ Input: point1 = [3, 4], point2 = [7, 1]

› Output: 5.00

💡 Note: Distance = √((7-3)² + (1-4)²) = √(4² + (-3)²) = √(16 + 9) = √25 = 5.00

Example 2 — Same Point

$ Input: point1 = [0, 0], point2 = [0, 0]

› Output: 0.00

💡 Note: Distance between identical points is 0: √((0-0)² + (0-0)²) = √(0 + 0) = 0.00

Example 3 — Negative Coordinates

$ Input: point1 = [-2, -3], point2 = [1, 1]

› Output: 5.00

💡 Note: Distance = √((1-(-2))² + (1-(-3))²) = √(3² + 4²) = √(9 + 16) = √25 = 5.00

Constraints

-100 ≤ coordinates ≤ 100
Result rounded to 2 decimal places
Points are in 2D coordinate system

Visualization

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Asked in

G Google 15 M Microsoft 12 A Apple 8 a Amazon 10

The key insight is to apply the Pythagorean theorem: the straight-line distance between two points is the square root of the sum of squared coordinate differences. The optimal approach directly calculates √((x2-x1)² + (y2-y1)²) in O(1) time and O(1) space, making it highly efficient for any coordinate system.

Common Approaches

✓ Direct Formula Application

⏱️ Time: O(1) Space: O(1)

Calculate the distance by extracting coordinates, finding differences, squaring them, summing, taking square root, and rounding to 2 decimal places.

Optimized with Helper Function

⏱️ Time: O(n) Space: O(1)

Implement a more flexible approach that can easily be extended to higher dimensions by using a helper function that accepts variable number of coordinates.

Direct Formula Application — Algorithm Steps

Extract coordinates: x1, y1 from point1 and x2, y2 from point2
Calculate differences: dx = x2 - x1, dy = y2 - y1
Apply formula: distance = √(dx² + dy²)
Round result to 2 decimal places

Visualization

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Step-by-Step Walkthrough

Extract Coordinates

Get x1,y1 and x2,y2 from input points

Calculate Differences

Find dx = x2-x1 and dy = y2-y1

Apply Formula

Compute √(dx² + dy²) and round to 2 decimals

Code -

solution.c — C

#include <stdio.h>
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <math.h>

double solution(int* point1, int* point2) {
    int x1 = point1[0], y1 = point1[1];
    int x2 = point2[0], y2 = point2[1];
    
    int dx = x2 - x1;
    int dy = y2 - y1;
    
    double distance = sqrt(dx * dx + dy * dy);
    return round(distance * 100.0) / 100.0;
}

int main() {
    int point1[2], point2[2];
    
    scanf("[%d,%d]", &point1[0], &point1[1]);
    scanf("[%d,%d]", &point2[0], &point2[1]);
    
    double result = solution(point1, point2);
    printf("%.2f\n", result);
    
    return 0;
}

Time & Space Complexity

Time Complexity

⏱️

O(1)

Fixed number of arithmetic operations regardless of input size

✓ Linear Growth

Space Complexity

O(1)

Only uses a few variables to store intermediate calculations

✓ Linear Space

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Medium Frequency

~10 min Avg. Time

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Distance Calculator - Problem

Input & Output

Constraints

Visualization

Related Problems

Common Approaches

Direct Formula Application — Algorithm Steps

Visualization

Code -

Time & Space Complexity

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