If you solve problems on leetcode , geeks for geeks or have been giving contests(competitive programming) then you must have encountered a TLE or Time limit exceed and in this blog will be giving you some key points as to how you can counter TLEs.

Let’s first take a look as to what is TLE? Time limit exceed(TLE) is a server-side error returned to indicate that the search took too long to return results.

Why does TLE come? One reason can be that your program is too slow and is taking longer than the time complexity(time limit). If in a problem it is given that N<= 100000, and your program has nested loops each of which go up to N, your program will never be fast enough. The second most common reason due to which TLE comes is when you are using the slow method to read input/produce output.

So until now what we looked into was what is TLE and why do they occur,but how can we overcome them?Here are some of the ways through which you can fix TLE errors:-

• Fix Input/Output methods-You must carefully choose the methods for input/output in order to optimize your code, For example:-In C++ do not use cin or cout instead use printf,scanf for input/output.

• Optimize your program-If the above solution doesn't work then you changed the approach an try using a different approach/algorithm in order to not get TLEs.

• Look at Suggestions-Although i never recommend anyone to see the comment section of the problem before solving the problem themselves but in this case if all of the above are not working then as the last resort you can go through the comment section for various kinds of approaches used by others to solve the problem.

This is how you can counter TLEs.

Thanks for reading till here.

Happy Coding!