Welcome to the first installment of our PHP coding puzzle series! In this puzzle, we’re asking you to write a PHP function that finds the closest pair of integers in an array. Given an array of integers, your function should return the two numbers that are closest together in value.
This puzzle is designed to test your ability to manipulate arrays in PHP and solve problems efficiently. We encourage you to work through the problem on your own, but don’t worry if you get stuck – we’ll provide a solution and explanation in the next article. Good luck!
Find The Closest Pair
You are given an array of integers, and you need to write a PHP function that will find the two numbers in the array that add up to a given target value. If there are multiple pairs that add up to the target value, return the one with the smallest absolute difference.
For example, given the array [1, 3, 5, 7, 9] and a target value of 8, the function should return [1, 7], because 1 + 7 = 8 and the absolute difference between 1 and 7 is smaller than the absolute difference between any other pair that adds up to 8.
Here’s the function signature:
function findClosestPair($arr, $target) {
// Your code here
}You can assume that the array contains at least two integers, and that there is at least one pair in the array that adds up to the target value.
The solution is already available in the next page 😉 Feel free to share with us your solution here in comments or Github.
