To solve this problem, we need to determine the minimum number of operations required to make two given integers equal. Each operation allows us to either add 1 or subtract 1 from one of the numbers.

Approach

The key insight here is that the minimum number of operations needed to make two numbers equal is simply the absolute difference between them. This is because each operation changes the value of a number by exactly 1, so the number of steps required to bridge the gap between the two numbers is the difference itself.

Solution Code

a, b = map(int, input().split())
print(abs(a - b))

Explanation

1. Reading Input: We first read the input line which contains two integers separated by a space.
2. Calculating Difference: We compute the absolute difference between the two integers. The absolute value ensures that we get a non-negative number, which represents the number of steps needed.
3. Output the Result: Finally, we print the absolute difference as the result.

This approach is efficient with a time complexity of O(1) since it involves a constant number of operations regardless of the input values. The space complexity is also O(1) as we only use a few variables to store the input values and the result.

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