如何改进此代码以查找数组的 k 个最大元素？

Question

The following code to find the k largest elements of an array is causing a TLE error. How can I optimize it to make it run faster?

import heapq    
for _ in range(int(input())):         
    n,k=map(int,input().split())   
    lists=list(map(int,input().split()))  
    
    heapq.heapify(lists)       
    
    for i in range(k+1):
        klargest=heapq.nlargest(i,lists)  
    
    print(*klargest)  

Answer 1

for i in range(k+1):
   klargest=heapq.nlargest(i,lists)  

The time complexity of each klargest operation is O(k*log n)) where n is the number of elements in heap. In the above code snippet, this operation is running for k+1 times for the values [0,k].

Calculating the time for the loop:

iteration value (Time)

i == 0 (0*log(n))

i == 1 (1*log(n))

i == 2 (2*log(n))

....

i == k-1 ((k-1)*log(n))

i == k ((k)*log(n))

Total time will be the sum of time taken in each operation = (0.log(n)) + (1*log(n)) +.... + ((k-1)*log(n)) + ((k)*log(n))

Total time = (0+1+2...+(k-1)+k) log(n) = ((k (k+1))/2)*log(n)

Total time ~~ O(k^2*(log(n)))

That's why the above code results in TLE.

OPTIMISED APPROACH:

import heapq    
for _ in range(int(input())):         
    n,k=map(int,input().split())   
    lists=list(map(int,input().split()))  
    
    heapq.heapify(lists)       
    
    for i in range(n-k):
        heapq.heappop(lists)
    klargest = list(lists) # converting heap to list
    print(*klargest) 

As Inbuilt heap in python is min-heap. So the above code is popping out minimum nk elements from lists. Popping out each operation will take log(n) time. Thus total time will be ~~ (nk)*logn. The remaining k elements in the heap are the klargest elements that we want to find.

Thus, the time complexity for the above solution is O((nk)*log(n)) == O(nlog(n)) which is a optimised time complexity.