Lecture 83 :-  Largest Number

To find the largest number possible by arranging a given array of non-negative integers, you need to perform a custom sort on the numbers. The key to getting the largest number is to compare two numbers as strings rather than as integers. The comparison should consider the concatenation of the numbers in different orders to see which one gives a larger result.

Here's a Python function to find the largest number:

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def largest_number(nums):    # Convert numbers to strings and sort based on custom comparison    nums = [str(num) for num in nums]    nums.sort(key=lambda x: x * 10, reverse=True)    return str(int(''.join(nums))) # Example usage: numbers = [3, 30, 34, 5, 9] result = largest_number(numbers) print(result)

Output:

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"9534330"

In this example, the function largest_number takes an array of non-negative integers nums. It first converts each number to a string using a list comprehension. Then, it sorts the strings using the custom comparison key, which is defined using a lambda function. The lambda function takes each string x and multiplies it by 10 to ensure that the comparison considers different concatenations of the strings. Finally, it joins the sorted strings and converts the result back to an integer and then to a string to handle cases where the largest number is 0.

The function returns the largest number as a string.

Keep in mind that this approach works correctly for non-negative integers. If the array contains negative numbers, you need to handle them differently or clarify the requirements for the problem.