Allocate Minimum Pages Binary Search on Answer in DSA Go - Build from Scratch

Allocate Minimum Pages using Binary Search on Answer

📖 Scenario: You are a librarian who needs to allocate books to students. Each book has a certain number of pages. You want to assign books to students so that the maximum number of pages assigned to any student is as small as possible.This helps keep the workload balanced among students.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that finds the minimum possible maximum pages assigned to a student by using binary search on the answer.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create a slice called books with these exact page counts: 100, 200, 300, 400

Create an integer variable called students and set it to 2

Write a function isPossible that takes books, students, and a max page limit, and returns true if allocation is possible

Use binary search between the max single book pages and sum of all pages to find the minimum max pages

Print the minimum max pages after allocation

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

This problem models distributing tasks or workloads evenly among workers to avoid overload.

💼 Career

Understanding binary search on answer is useful in optimization problems common in software engineering and coding interviews.

1

Create the books slice

Create a slice called books with these exact page counts: 100, 200, 300, 400

DSA Go

# Create the books slice with exact page counts
# Your code here

Hint

Use books := []int{100, 200, 300, 400} to create the slice.

2

Add the students variable

Create an integer variable called students and set it to 2

DSA Go

package main

func main() {
    books := []int{100, 200, 300, 400}
    // Create students variable and set to 2
    // Your code here
}

Hint

Use students := 2 to create the variable.

3

Write the isPossible function

Write a function called isPossible that takes books []int, students int, and maxPages int as parameters and returns bool. It should return true if it is possible to allocate books to students such that no student reads more than maxPages pages.

DSA Go

package main

func main() {
    books := []int{100, 200, 300, 400}
    students := 2
}

// Write isPossible function below
// Your code here

Hint

Check if any single book has more pages than maxPages. If yes, return false. Otherwise, count how many students are needed if we limit pages to maxPages.

4

Find and print the minimum maximum pages

Use binary search between the maximum pages in books and the sum of all pages in books to find the minimum maximum pages that can be allocated to students. Print the result using fmt.Println.

DSA Go

package main

import "fmt"

func main() {
    books := []int{100, 200, 300, 400}
    students := 2

    // Use binary search to find minimum max pages
    // Your code here
}

func isPossible(books []int, students int, maxPages int) bool {
    count := 1
    currentSum := 0
    for _, pages := range books {
        if pages > maxPages {
            return false
        }
        if currentSum+pages > maxPages {
            count++
            currentSum = pages
            if count > students {
                return false
            }
        } else {
            currentSum += pages
        }
    }
    return true
}

Hint

Use binary search between the max single book pages and total pages. Use isPossible to check feasibility. Print the final minimum max pages.