DSA isn’t about solving 3,500 problems it’s about recognizing the right pattern at the right time.
Master patterns first, and speed confidence follow automatically. 🙌💯
Here are the Top 15 DSA Patterns you need to know.
1. Two Pointers
Use: Use two pointers to traverse a structure or range.
Examples: 3Sum, Container With Most Water
2. Sliding Window
Use : Maintain a window of elements and slide it to find solution.
Examples: Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters
3. Fast & Slow Pointers
Use two pointers at different speeds.
Examples: Linked List Cycle, Middle of Linked List
4. Binary Search
Use : Divide search space in half to find the answer.
Examples: Search in Rotated Sorted Array
5. Binary Search on Answer
Use: Binary search the possible answer space.
Examples: Koko Eating Bananas, Minimum Days to Make Bouquets
6. Merge Intervals
Use : Merge overlapping intervals to simplify.
Examples: Merge Intervals, Insert Interval
7. Backtracking
Use : Try all possible choices and backtrack.
Examples: N-Queens, Sudoku Solver
8. DFS (Depth First Search)
Use : Go deep in one path before backtracking.
Examples: Number of Islands, Clone Graph
9. BFS (Breadth First Search)
Use : Explore level by level using a queue.
Examples: Shortest Path in Binary Matrix
10. Topological Sort
Use : Linear ordering of tasks with dependencies.
Examples: Course Schedule, Alien Dictionary
11. Dynamic Programming
Use : Solve by breaking into subproblems and storing results.
Examples: Climbing Stairs, Coin Change
12. Greedy
Use : Make the best local choice at each step.
Examples: Dijkstra, Union Find, Graph Coloring
13. Graph
Use : Work with nodes and edges.
Examples: Implement Trie, Word Search II
14. Tries (Prefix Tree)
Use : Tree-based structure for strings.
Examples: Implement Trie, Word Search II
15. Heap / Priority Queue
Use: Use heap to efficiently get min/max.
Examples: Kth Largest Element, Merge K Sorted Lists
Kth Largest Element → Use a min-heap of size `k` to find the kth largest element in an array.
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