Top k largest elements

Given an integer array nums and an integer k, return the k largest elements of nums. You may return them in any order.

The result is a multiset. If a value appears several times and those copies fall inside the top k, include each copy.

Implement:

def top_k_largest(nums: list[int], k: int) -> list[int]:
    ...

Constraints

• 0 <= len(nums) <= 10^6
• -10^9 <= nums[i] <= 10^9
• 0 <= k. If k is 0, return an empty list. If k >= len(nums), return every element.
• Do better than sorting the whole array when k is much smaller than n.

Example 1

nums = [4, 9, 1, 7, 3], k = 2
output: [9, 7]   # [7, 9] is also accepted

Example 2

nums = [5, 5, 2, 5, 1], k = 2
output: [5, 5]   # duplicates are counted separately

Be ready to discuss what changes if nums arrives as a stream that is too large to keep in memory.

Reconstructed from the reported question; details may differ from what interviewers ask.