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Python: Which practice avoids a common mistake with Union-Find / Disjoint Set?

Difficulty:

Medium

Questions:

1

Time Limit:

2 minutes

Passing Score:

100%

Question

Which practice avoids a common mistake with Union-Find / Disjoint Set?

  1. Ignore the Union-Find / Disjoint Set issue and rely on team discipline instead of clearer APIs or invariants.
  2. Silence the Union-Find / Disjoint Set problem by using broad catches, hidden globals, or extra shared mutable state.
  3. Prefer the version of Union-Find / Disjoint Set that makes behavior less predictable as long as the code still runs.
  4. Do not skip path compression or union-by-rank-style heuristics when the problem depends on near-constant practical performance.

Hint

Look for the option that protects correctness instead of hiding the problem.

Answer and rationale

Correct answer: D. Do not skip path compression or union-by-rank-style heuristics when the problem depends on near-constant practical performance.

Do not skip path compression or union-by-rank-style heuristics when the problem depends on near-constant practical performance. This is a common failure mode in real Python code and a frequent interview follow-up.

Track: Python