Kth smallest element in sorted matrix

Question

This is an interview question.

Find the K^th smallest element in a matrix with sorted rows and columns.
Is it correct that the K^th small

Answer 1

Start traversing the matrix from the top-left corner (0,0) and use a binary heap for storing the "frontier" - a border between a visited part of the matrix and the rest of it.

Implementation in Java:

private static class Cell implements Comparable {

    private final int x;
    private final int y;
    private final int value;

    public Cell(int x, int y, int value) {
        this.x = x;
        this.y = y;
        this.value = value;
    }

    @Override
    public int compareTo(Cell that) {
        return this.value - that.value;
    }

}

private static int findMin(int[][] matrix, int k) {

    int min = matrix[0][0];

    PriorityQueue frontier = new PriorityQueue<>();
    frontier.add(new Cell(0, 0, min));

    while (k > 1) {

        Cell poll = frontier.remove();

        if (poll.y + 1 < matrix[poll.x].length) frontier.add(new Cell(poll.x, poll.y + 1, matrix[poll.x][poll.y + 1]));
        if (poll.x + 1 < matrix.length) frontier.add(new Cell(poll.x + 1, poll.y, matrix[poll.x + 1][poll.y]));

        if (poll.value > min) {
            min = poll.value;
            k--;
        }

    }

    return min;

}