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Single Loop: Instead of a nested loop to find distances, we maintain the last seen index of each number in the array using a simple array last_seen. This allows us to compute the distance in constant time.
Memory Management: Dynamic memory allocation is used for arrays a, b, and last_seen to avoid stack overflow issues with large inputs.
Array Size: We assume the elements in a are in the range of 0 to 10000 (you might want to adjust this based on actual constraints).
Result Calculation: The second loop calculates the minimum distance only once.
Complexity:
Time Complexity: O(n), where n is the number of elements in the array.
Space Complexity: O(n) for the additional arrays used.
This optimized approach should perform much better for larger input sizes.