How to find the time complexity of a program

Question

Hi Team,

I am new to DSA. I want to find the time complexity of the below program. How can I get that?

int a = 0, b = 0;
for (i = 0; i < N; i++) {
    a = a + rand();
}
for (j = 0; j < M; j++) {
    b = b + rand();
}

Answer 1

Hi@akhtar,

The first loop is O(N) and the second loop is O(M). Since we don’t know which is bigger, we say this is O(N + M). This can also be written as O(max(N, M)). You can also find how much this program will consume using the time command in Linux.