How to calculate time complexity of this code?=.= - time-complexity

Question

char[] chars = String.valueOf(num).toCharArray();
int n = chars.length;
for (int i = n - 1; i > 0; i--) {
if (chars[i - 1] > chars[i]) {
chars[i - 1]--;
Arrays.fill(chars, i, n, '9');
}
}
return Integer.parseInt(new String(chars));
What is the time complexity of this code? Could you teach me how to calculate it? Thank you!

Answer 1

Time complexity is a measure of how a program's run-time changes as input size grows. The first thing you have to determine is what (if any) aspect of your input can cause run-time to vary, and to represent that aspect as a variable. Framing run-time as a function of that variable (or those variables) is how you determine the program's time complexity. Conventionally, when only a single aspect of the input causes run-time to vary, we represent that aspect by the variable n.
Your program primarily varies in run-time based on how many times the for-loop runs. We can see that the for-loop runs the length of chars times (note that the length of chars is the number of digits of num). Conveniently, that length is already denoted as n, which we will use as the variable representing input size. That is, taking n to be the number of digits in num, we want to determine exactly how run-time varies with n by expressing run-time as a function of n.
Also note that when doing complexity analysis, you are primarily concerned with the growth in run-time as n gets arbitrarily large (how run-time scales with n as n goes to infinity), so you typically ignore constant factors and only focus on the highest order terms, writing run-time in "Big O" notation. That is, because 3n, n, and n/2 all grow in about the same way as n goes to infinity, we would represent them all as O(n), because our primary goal is to distinguish this kind of linear growth, from the quadratic O(n^2) growth of n^2, 5n^2 + 10, or n^2 + n, from the logarithmic O(logn) growth of log(n), log(2n), or log(n) + 1, or the constant O(1) time (time that doesn't scale with n) represented by 1, 5, 100000 etc.
So, let's try to express the total number of operations the program does in terms of n. It can be helpful at first to just go line-by-line for this and to add everything up in the end.
The first line, turning num into an n character string and then turning that string to an length n array of chars, does O(n) work. (n work to turn each of n digits into a character, than another n work to put each of those characters into an array. n + n = 2n = O(n) total work)
char[] chars = String.valueOf(num).toCharArray(); // O(n)
The next line just reads the length value from the array and saves it as n. This operation takes the same amount of time no matter how long the array is, so it is O(1).
int n = chars.length; // O(1)
For every digit of num, our program runs 1 for loop, so O(n) total loops:
for (int i = n - 1; i > 0; i--) { // O(n)
Inside the for loop, a conditional check is performed, and then, if it returns true, a value may be decremented and the array from i to n filled.
if (chars[i - 1] > chars[i]) { // O(1)
chars[i - 1]--; // O(1)
Arrays.fill(chars, i, n, '9'); // O(n-i) = O(n)
}
The fill operation is O(n-i) because that is how many characters may be changed to '9'. O(n-i) is O(n), because i is just a constant and lower order than n, which, as previously mentioned, means it gets ignored in big O.
Finally, you parse the n characters of chars as an int, and return it. Altogether:
static Integer foo(int num) {
char[] chars = String.valueOf(num).toCharArray(); // O(n)
int n = chars.length; // O(1)
for (int i = n - 1; i > 0; i--) { // O(n)
if (chars[i - 1] > chars[i]) { // O(1)
chars[i - 1]--; // O(1)
Arrays.fill(chars, i, n, '9'); // O(n)
}
}
return Integer.parseInt(new String(chars)); // O(n)
}
When we add everything up, we get, the total time-complexity as a function of n, T(n).
T(n) = O(n) + O(1) + O(n)*(O(1) + O(1) + O(n)) + O(n)
There is a product in the expression to represent the total work done across all iterations of the for-loop: O(n) iterations times O(1) + O(1) + O(n) work in each iteration. In reality, some iterations the for loop might only do O(1) work (when the condition is false), but in the worst case the whole body is executed every iteration, and complexity analysis is typically done for the worst case unless otherwise specified.
You can simplify this function for run-time by using the fact that big O strips constants and lower-order terms, along with the facts that that O(a) + O(b) = O(a + b) and a*O(b) = O(a*b).
T(n) = O(n+1+n) + O(n)*O(1 + 1 + n)
= O(2n+1) + O(n)*O(n+2)
= O(n) + O(n)*O(n)
= O(n) + O(n^2)
= O(n^2 + n)
= O(n^2)
So you would say that the overall time complexity of the program is O(n^2), meaning that run-time scales quadratically with input size in the worst case.