Find Minimum Cost to Remove Array Elements
You are given an integer array nums. Your task is to remove all elements from the array by performing one of the following operations at each step until nums is empty:
- Choose any two elements from the first three elements of
numsand remove them. The cost of this operation is the maximum of the two elements removed. - If fewer than three elements remain in
nums, remove all the remaining elements in a single operation. The cost of this operation is the maximum of the remaining elements.
Return the minimum cost required to remove all the elements.
Example 1
Input
nums = [6,2,8,4]Output
12Removing 6 and 8 first costs 8, then removing the remaining 2 and 4 costs 4, for a minimum total cost of 12.
Example 2
Input
nums = [2,1,3,3]Output
5Removing 2 and 1 first costs 2, then removing the remaining 3 and 3 costs 3, for a minimum total cost of 5.
Constraints
- 1 <= nums.length <= 1000
- 1 <= nums[i] <= 10^6