My first instinct was to overcomplicate it.
Model the services and their path dependencies as a bipartite graph or inverted index, then for each deleted path, look up all connected services and deduplicate the results. Focus on efficiency by preprocessing the data into a map from path to services, enabling O(1) lookups per deleted path.
Pro tip: Clarify upfront whether the JSON is static or dynamic, and whether the result should be sorted or deduplicated—this shows attention to real-world API design and prevents wasted effort.
Ask about input format, expected output (list vs set, sorted?), handling of duplicate paths, and whether services can have multiple dependencies. Confirm if the JSON is given as a string or already parsed.
Extract services and their read/write paths. Build an inverted index: a hash map where each key is a path and the value is a set of service names that read from or write to that path.
Iterate through the list of deleted paths, and for each path, look up the corresponding services in the inverted index. Collect all services into a result set to avoid duplicates.
Convert the result set to a list (optionally sorted) and return it. Discuss time and space complexity: O(P + D) where P is total path dependencies and D is number of deleted paths.
AI-generated suggestions, not part of the candidate's original notes. May be inaccurate — verify before relying on them.