Skip to main content
LeetCode 774, Hard. Topics: Array, Binary Search. View on LeetCode. Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 12 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:

Problem

You are given an integer array stations that represents the positions of the gas stations on the x-axis. You are also given an integer k. You should add k new gas stations. You can add the stations anywhere on the x-axis, and not necessarily on an integer position. Let penalty() be the maximum distance between adjacent gas stations after adding the k new stations. Return the smallest possible value of penalty(). Answers within 10^-6 of the actual answer will be accepted.

Examples

Constraints

  • 10 <= stations.length <= 2000
  • 0 <= stations[i] <= 10^8
  • stations is sorted in a strictly increasing order.
  • 1 <= k <= 10^6

Solution

Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:

Complexity

Tags

NeetCode All.
Last modified on September 7, 2026