I have been working on an exercise from google's dev tech guide. It is called Compression and Decompression you can check the following link to get the description of the problem Challenge Description.
Here is my code for the solution:
public static String decompressV2 (String string, int start, int times) {
String result = "";
for (int i = 0; i < times; i++) {
inner:
{
for (int j = start; j < string.length(); j++) {
if (isNumeric(string.substring(j, j + 1))) {
String num = string.substring(j, j + 1);
int times2 = Integer.parseInt(num);
String temp = decompressV2(string, j + 2, times2);
result = result + temp;
int next_j = find_next(string, j + 2);
j = next_j;
continue;
}
if (string.substring(j, j + 1).equals("]")) { // Si es un bracket cerrado
break inner;
}
result = result + string.substring(j,j+1);
}
}
}
return result;
}
public static int find_next(String string, int start) {
int count = 0;
for (int i = start; i < string.length(); i++) {
if (string.substring(i, i+1).equals("[")) {
count= count + 1;
}
if (string.substring(i, i +1).equals("]") && count> 0) {
count = count- 1;
continue;
}
if (string.substring(i, i +1).equals("]") && count== 0) {
return i;
}
}
return -111111;
}
I will explain a little bit about the inner workings of my approach. It is a basic solution involves use of simple recursion and loops.
So, let's start from the beggining with a simple decompression:
DevTech.decompressV2("2[3[a]b]", 0, 1);
As you can see, the 0 indicates that it has to iterate over the string at index 0, and the 1 indicates that the string has to be evaluated only once: 1[ 2[3[a]b] ]
The core here is that everytime you encounter a number you call the algorithm again(recursively) and continue where the string insides its brackets ends, that's the find_next function for.
When it finds a close brackets, the inner loop breaks, that's the way I choose to make the stop sign.
I think that would be the main idea behind the algorithm, if you read the code closely you'll get the full picture.
So here are some of my concerns about the way I've written the solution:
I could not find a more clean solution to tell the algorithm were to go next if it finds a number. So I kind of hardcoded it with the find_next function. Is there a way to do this more clean inside the decompress func ?
About performance, It wastes a lot of time by doing the same thing again, when you have a number bigger than 1 at the begging of a bracket.
I am relatively to programming so maybe this code also needs an improvement not in the idea, but in the ways It's written. So would be very grateful to get some suggestions.
This is the approach I figure out but I am sure there are a couple more, I could not think of anyone but It would be great if you could tell your ideas.
In the description it tells you some things that you should be awared of when developing the solutions. They are: handling non-repeated strings, handling repetitions inside, not doing the same job twice, not copying too much. Are these covered by my approach ?
And the last point It's about tets cases, I know that confidence is very important when developing solutions, and the best way to give confidence to an algorithm is test cases. I tried a few and they all worked as expected. But what techniques do you recommend for developing test cases. Are there any softwares?
So that would be all guys, I am new to the community so I am open to suggestions about the how to improve the quality of the question. Cheers!
Your solution involves a lot of string copying that really slows it down. Instead of returning strings that you concatenate, you should pass a StringBuilder into every call and append substrings onto that.
That means you can use your return value to indicate the position to continue scanning from.
You're also parsing repeated parts of the source string more than once.
My solution looks like this:
public static String decompress(String src)
{
StringBuilder dest = new StringBuilder();
_decomp2(dest, src, 0);
return dest.toString();
}
private static int _decomp2(StringBuilder dest, String src, int pos)
{
int num=0;
while(pos < src.length()) {
char c = src.charAt(pos++);
if (c == ']') {
break;
}
if (c>='0' && c<='9') {
num = num*10 + (c-'0');
} else if (c=='[') {
int startlen = dest.length();
pos = _decomp2(dest, src, pos);
if (num<1) {
// 0 repetitions -- delete it
dest.setLength(startlen);
} else {
// copy output num-1 times
int copyEnd = startlen + (num-1) * (dest.length()-startlen);
for (int i=startlen; i<copyEnd; ++i) {
dest.append(dest.charAt(i));
}
}
num=0;
} else {
// regular char
dest.append(c);
num=0;
}
}
return pos;
}
I would try to return a tuple that also contains the next index where decompression should continue from. Then we can have a recursion that concatenates the current part with the rest of the block in the current recursion depth.
Here's JavaScript code. It takes some thought to encapsulate the order of operations that reflects the rules.
function f(s, i=0){
if (i == s.length)
return ['', i];
// We might start with a multiplier
let m = '';
while (!isNaN(s[i]))
m = m + s[i++];
// If we have a multiplier, we'll
// also have a nested expression
if (s[i] == '['){
let result = '';
const [word, nextIdx] = f(s, i + 1);
for (let j=0; j<Number(m); j++)
result = result + word;
const [rest, end] = f(s, nextIdx);
return [result + rest, end]
}
// Otherwise, we may have a word,
let word = '';
while (isNaN(s[i]) && s[i] != ']' && i < s.length)
word = word + s[i++];
// followed by either the end of an expression
// or another multiplier
const [rest, end] = s[i] == ']' ? ['', i + 1] : f(s, i);
return [word + rest, end];
}
var strs = [
'2[3[a]b]',
'10[a]',
'3[abc]4[ab]c',
'2[2[a]g2[r]]'
];
for (const s of strs){
console.log(s);
console.log(JSON.stringify(f(s)));
console.log('');
}
The definition of the problem is:
Given two strings, find the longest common substring.
Return the length of it.
I was solving this problem and I think I solved it with O(m*n) time complexity. However I don't know why when I look up the solution, it's all talking about the optimal solution being dynamic programming - http://www.geeksforgeeks.org/longest-common-substring/
Here's my solution, you can test it here: http://www.lintcode.com/en/problem/longest-common-substring/
int longestCommonSubstring(string &A, string &B) {
int ans = 0;
for (int i=0; i<A.length(); i++) {
int counter = 0;
int k = i;
for (int j=0; j<B.length() && k <A.length(); j++) {
if (A[k]!=B[j]) {
counter = 0;
k = i;
} else {
k++;
counter++;
ans = max(ans, counter);
}
}
}
return ans;
}
My idea is simple, start from the first position of string A and see what's the longest substring I can match with string B, then start from the second position of string A and see what's the longest substring I can match....
Is there something wrong with my solution? Or is it not O(m*n) complexity?
Good news: your algorithm is O(mn). Bad news: it doesn't work correctly.
Your inner loop is wrong: it's intended to find the longest initial substring of A[i:] in B, but it works like this:
j = 0
While j < len(B)
Match as much of A[i:] against B[j:]. Call it s.
Remember s if it's the longest so far found.
j += len(s)
This fails to find the longest match. For example, when A = "XXY" and B = "XXXY" and i=0 it'll find "XX" as the longest match instead of the complete match "XXY".
Here's a runnable version of your code (lightly transcribed into C) that shows the faulty result:
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
int lcs(const char* A, const char* B) {
int al = strlen(A);
int bl = strlen(B);
int ans = 0;
for (int i=0; i<al; i++) {
int counter = 0;
int k = i;
for (int j=0; j<bl && k<al; j++) {
if (A[k]!=B[j]) {
counter = 0;
k = i;
} else {
k++;
counter++;
if (counter >= ans) ans = counter;
}
}
}
return ans;
}
int main(int argc, char**argv) {
printf("%d\n", lcs("XXY", "XXXY"));
return 0;
}
Running this program outputs "2".
Your solution is O(nm) complexity and if you look compare the structure to the provided algorithm its the exact same; however, yours does not memoize.
One advantage that the dynamic algorithm provided in the link has is that in the same complexity class time it can recall different substring lengths in O(1); otherwise, it looks good to me.
This is a kind of thing will happen from time to time because storing subspace solutions will not always result in a better run time (on first call) and result in the same complexity class runtime instead (eg. try to compute the nth Fibonacci number with a dynamic solution and compare that to a tail recursive solution. Note that in this case like your case, after the array is filled the first time, its faster to return an answer each successive call.
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Definition:
A palindrome is a word, phrase, number or other sequence of units that has the property of reading the same in either direction
How to check if the given string is a palindrome?
This was one of the FAIQ [Frequently Asked Interview Question] a while ago but that mostly using C.
Looking for solutions in any and all languages possible.
PHP sample:
$string = "A man, a plan, a canal, Panama";
function is_palindrome($string)
{
$a = strtolower(preg_replace("/[^A-Za-z0-9]/","",$string));
return $a==strrev($a);
}
Removes any non-alphanumeric characters (spaces, commas, exclamation points, etc.) to allow for full sentences as above, as well as simple words.
Windows XP (might also work on 2000) or later BATCH script:
#echo off
call :is_palindrome %1
if %ERRORLEVEL% == 0 (
echo %1 is a palindrome
) else (
echo %1 is NOT a palindrome
)
exit /B 0
:is_palindrome
set word=%~1
set reverse=
call :reverse_chars "%word%"
set return=1
if "$%word%" == "$%reverse%" (
set return=0
)
exit /B %return%
:reverse_chars
set chars=%~1
set reverse=%chars:~0,1%%reverse%
set chars=%chars:~1%
if "$%chars%" == "$" (
exit /B 0
) else (
call :reverse_chars "%chars%"
)
exit /B 0
Language agnostic meta-code then...
rev = StringReverse(originalString)
return ( rev == originalString );
C# in-place algorithm. Any preprocessing, like case insensitivity or stripping of whitespace and punctuation should be done before passing to this function.
boolean IsPalindrome(string s) {
for (int i = 0; i < s.Length / 2; i++)
{
if (s[i] != s[s.Length - 1 - i]) return false;
}
return true;
}
Edit: removed unnecessary "+1" in loop condition and spent the saved comparison on removing the redundant Length comparison. Thanks to the commenters!
C#: LINQ
var str = "a b a";
var test = Enumerable.SequenceEqual(str.ToCharArray(),
str.ToCharArray().Reverse());
A more Ruby-style rewrite of Hal's Ruby version:
class String
def palindrome?
(test = gsub(/[^A-Za-z]/, '').downcase) == test.reverse
end
end
Now you can call palindrome? on any string.
Unoptimized Python:
>>> def is_palindrome(s):
... return s == s[::-1]
Java solution:
public class QuickTest {
public static void main(String[] args) {
check("AmanaplanacanalPanama".toLowerCase());
check("Hello World".toLowerCase());
}
public static void check(String aString) {
System.out.print(aString + ": ");
char[] chars = aString.toCharArray();
for (int i = 0, j = (chars.length - 1); i < (chars.length / 2); i++, j--) {
if (chars[i] != chars[j]) {
System.out.println("Not a palindrome!");
return;
}
}
System.out.println("Found a palindrome!");
}
}
Using a good data structure usually helps impress the professor:
Push half the chars onto a stack (Length / 2).
Pop and compare each char until the first unmatch.
If the stack has zero elements: palindrome.
*in the case of a string with an odd Length, throw out the middle char.
C in the house. (not sure if you didn't want a C example here)
bool IsPalindrome(char *s)
{
int i,d;
int length = strlen(s);
char cf, cb;
for(i=0, d=length-1 ; i < length && d >= 0 ; i++ , d--)
{
while(cf= toupper(s[i]), (cf < 'A' || cf >'Z') && i < length-1)i++;
while(cb= toupper(s[d]), (cb < 'A' || cb >'Z') && d > 0 )d--;
if(cf != cb && cf >= 'A' && cf <= 'Z' && cb >= 'A' && cb <='Z')
return false;
}
return true;
}
That will return true for "racecar", "Racecar", "race car", "racecar ", and "RaCe cAr". It would be easy to modify to include symbols or spaces as well, but I figure it's more useful to only count letters(and ignore case). This works for all palindromes I've found in the answers here, and I've been unable to trick it into false negatives/positives.
Also, if you don't like bool in a "C" program, it could obviously return int, with return 1 and return 0 for true and false respectively.
Here's a python way. Note: this isn't really that "pythonic" but it demonstrates the algorithm.
def IsPalindromeString(n):
myLen = len(n)
i = 0
while i <= myLen/2:
if n[i] != n[myLen-1-i]:
return False
i += 1
return True
Delphi
function IsPalindrome(const s: string): boolean;
var
i, j: integer;
begin
Result := false;
j := Length(s);
for i := 1 to Length(s) div 2 do begin
if s[i] <> s[j] then
Exit;
Dec(j);
end;
Result := true;
end;
I'm seeing a lot of incorrect answers here. Any correct solution needs to ignore whitespace and punctuation (and any non-alphabetic characters actually) and needs to be case insensitive.
A few good example test cases are:
"A man, a plan, a canal, Panama."
"A Toyota's a Toyota."
"A"
""
As well as some non-palindromes.
Example solution in C# (note: empty and null strings are considered palindromes in this design, if this is not desired it's easy to change):
public static bool IsPalindrome(string palindromeCandidate)
{
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(palindromeCandidate))
{
return true;
}
Regex nonAlphaChars = new Regex("[^a-z0-9]");
string alphaOnlyCandidate = nonAlphaChars.Replace(palindromeCandidate.ToLower(), "");
if (string.IsNullOrEmpty(alphaOnlyCandidate))
{
return true;
}
int leftIndex = 0;
int rightIndex = alphaOnlyCandidate.Length - 1;
while (rightIndex > leftIndex)
{
if (alphaOnlyCandidate[leftIndex] != alphaOnlyCandidate[rightIndex])
{
return false;
}
leftIndex++;
rightIndex--;
}
return true;
}
EDIT: from the comments:
bool palindrome(std::string const& s)
{
return std::equal(s.begin(), s.end(), s.rbegin());
}
The c++ way.
My naive implementation using the elegant iterators. In reality, you would probably check
and stop once your forward iterator has past the halfway mark to your string.
#include <string>
#include <iostream>
using namespace std;
bool palindrome(string foo)
{
string::iterator front;
string::reverse_iterator back;
bool is_palindrome = true;
for(front = foo.begin(), back = foo.rbegin();
is_palindrome && front!= foo.end() && back != foo.rend();
++front, ++back
)
{
if(*front != *back)
is_palindrome = false;
}
return is_palindrome;
}
int main()
{
string a = "hi there", b = "laval";
cout << "String a: \"" << a << "\" is " << ((palindrome(a))? "" : "not ") << "a palindrome." <<endl;
cout << "String b: \"" << b << "\" is " << ((palindrome(b))? "" : "not ") << "a palindrome." <<endl;
}
boolean isPalindrome(String str1) {
//first strip out punctuation and spaces
String stripped = str1.replaceAll("[^a-zA-Z0-9]", "");
return stripped.equalsIgnoreCase((new StringBuilder(stripped)).reverse().toString());
}
Java version
Here's my solution, without using a strrev. Written in C#, but it will work in any language that has a string length function.
private static bool Pal(string s) {
for (int i = 0; i < s.Length; i++) {
if (s[i] != s[s.Length - 1 - i]) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
Here's my solution in c#
static bool isPalindrome(string s)
{
string allowedChars = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz"+
"1234567890ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ";
string compareString = String.Empty;
string rev = string.Empty;
for (int i = 0; i <= s.Length - 1; i++)
{
char c = s[i];
if (allowedChars.IndexOf(c) > -1)
{
compareString += c;
}
}
for (int i = compareString.Length - 1; i >= 0; i--)
{
char c = compareString[i];
rev += c;
}
return rev.Equals(compareString,
StringComparison.CurrentCultureIgnoreCase);
}
Here's a Python version that deals with different cases, punctuation and whitespace.
import string
def is_palindrome(palindrome):
letters = palindrome.translate(string.maketrans("",""),
string.whitespace + string.punctuation).lower()
return letters == letters[::-1]
Edit: Shamelessly stole from Blair Conrad's neater answer to remove the slightly clumsy list processing from my previous version.
C++
std::string a = "god";
std::string b = "lol";
std::cout << (std::string(a.rbegin(), a.rend()) == a) << " "
<< (std::string(b.rbegin(), b.rend()) == b);
Bash
function ispalin { [ "$( echo -n $1 | tac -rs . )" = "$1" ]; }
echo "$(ispalin god && echo yes || echo no), $(ispalin lol && echo yes || echo no)"
Gnu Awk
/* obvious solution */
function ispalin(cand, i) {
for(i=0; i<length(cand)/2; i++)
if(substr(cand, length(cand)-i, 1) != substr(cand, i+1, 1))
return 0;
return 1;
}
/* not so obvious solution. cough cough */
{
orig = $0;
while($0) {
stuff = stuff gensub(/^.*(.)$/, "\\1", 1);
$0 = gensub(/^(.*).$/, "\\1", 1);
}
print (stuff == orig);
}
Haskell
Some brain dead way doing it in Haskell
ispalin :: [Char] -> Bool
ispalin a = a == (let xi (y:my) = (xi my) ++ [y]; xi [] = [] in \x -> xi x) a
Plain English
"Just reverse the string and if it is the same as before, it's a palindrome"
Ruby:
class String
def is_palindrome?
letters_only = gsub(/\W/,'').downcase
letters_only == letters_only.reverse
end
end
puts 'abc'.is_palindrome? # => false
puts 'aba'.is_palindrome? # => true
puts "Madam, I'm Adam.".is_palindrome? # => true
An obfuscated C version:
int IsPalindrome (char *s)
{
char*a,*b,c=0;
for(a=b=s;a<=b;c=(c?c==1?c=(*a&~32)-65>25u?*++a,1:2:c==2?(*--b&~32)-65<26u?3:2:c==3?(*b-65&~32)-(*a-65&~32)?*(b=s=0,a),4:*++a,1:0:*++b?0:1));
return s!=0;
}
This Java code should work inside a boolean method:
Note: You only need to check the first half of the characters with the back half, otherwise you are overlapping and doubling the amount of checks that need to be made.
private static boolean doPal(String test) {
for(int i = 0; i < test.length() / 2; i++) {
if(test.charAt(i) != test.charAt(test.length() - 1 - i)) {
return false;
}
}
return true;
}
Another C++ one. Optimized for speed and size.
bool is_palindrome(const std::string& candidate) {
for(std::string::const_iterator left = candidate.begin(), right = candidate.end(); left < --right ; ++left)
if (*left != *right)
return false;
return true;
}
Lisp:
(defun palindrome(x) (string= x (reverse x)))
Three versions in Smalltalk, from dumbest to correct.
In Smalltalk, = is the comparison operator:
isPalindrome: aString
"Dumbest."
^ aString reverse = aString
The message #translateToLowercase returns the string as lowercase:
isPalindrome: aString
"Case insensitive"
|lowercase|
lowercase := aString translateToLowercase.
^ lowercase reverse = lowercase
And in Smalltalk, strings are part of the Collection framework, you can use the message #select:thenCollect:, so here's the last version:
isPalindrome: aString
"Case insensitive and keeping only alphabetic chars
(blanks & punctuation insensitive)."
|lowercaseLetters|
lowercaseLetters := aString
select: [:char | char isAlphabetic]
thenCollect: [:char | char asLowercase].
^ lowercaseLetters reverse = lowercaseLetters
Note that in the above C++ solutions, there was some problems.
One solution was inefficient because it passed an std::string by copy, and because it iterated over all the chars, instead of comparing only half the chars. Then, even when discovering the string was not a palindrome, it continued the loop, waiting its end before reporting "false".
The other was better, with a very small function, whose problem was that it was not able to test anything else than std::string. In C++, it is easy to extend an algorithm to a whole bunch of similar objects. By templating its std::string into "T", it would have worked on both std::string, std::wstring, std::vector and std::deque. But without major modification because of the use of the operator <, the std::list was out of its scope.
My own solutions try to show that a C++ solution won't stop at working on the exact current type, but will strive to work an anything that behaves the same way, no matter the type. For example, I could apply my palindrome tests on std::string, on vector of int or on list of "Anything" as long as Anything was comparable through its operator = (build in types, as well as classes).
Note that the template can even be extended with an optional type that can be used to compare the data. For example, if you want to compare in a case insensitive way, or even compare similar characters (like è, é, ë, ê and e).
Like king Leonidas would have said: "Templates ? This is C++ !!!"
So, in C++, there are at least 3 major ways to do it, each one leading to the other:
Solution A: In a c-like way
The problem is that until C++0X, we can't consider the std::string array of chars as contiguous, so we must "cheat" and retrieve the c_str() property. As we are using it in a read-only fashion, it should be ok...
bool isPalindromeA(const std::string & p_strText)
{
if(p_strText.length() < 2) return true ;
const char * pStart = p_strText.c_str() ;
const char * pEnd = pStart + p_strText.length() - 1 ;
for(; pStart < pEnd; ++pStart, --pEnd)
{
if(*pStart != *pEnd)
{
return false ;
}
}
return true ;
}
Solution B: A more "C++" version
Now, we'll try to apply the same solution, but to any C++ container with random access to its items through operator []. For example, any std::basic_string, std::vector, std::deque, etc. Operator [] is constant access for those containers, so we won't lose undue speed.
template <typename T>
bool isPalindromeB(const T & p_aText)
{
if(p_aText.empty()) return true ;
typename T::size_type iStart = 0 ;
typename T::size_type iEnd = p_aText.size() - 1 ;
for(; iStart < iEnd; ++iStart, --iEnd)
{
if(p_aText[iStart] != p_aText[iEnd])
{
return false ;
}
}
return true ;
}
Solution C: Template powah !
It will work with almost any unordered STL-like container with bidirectional iterators
For example, any std::basic_string, std::vector, std::deque, std::list, etc.
So, this function can be applied on all STL-like containers with the following conditions:
1 - T is a container with bidirectional iterator
2 - T's iterator points to a comparable type (through operator =)
template <typename T>
bool isPalindromeC(const T & p_aText)
{
if(p_aText.empty()) return true ;
typename T::const_iterator pStart = p_aText.begin() ;
typename T::const_iterator pEnd = p_aText.end() ;
--pEnd ;
while(true)
{
if(*pStart != *pEnd)
{
return false ;
}
if((pStart == pEnd) || (++pStart == pEnd))
{
return true ;
}
--pEnd ;
}
}
A simple Java solution:
public boolean isPalindrome(String testString) {
StringBuffer sb = new StringBuffer(testString);
String reverseString = sb.reverse().toString();
if(testString.equalsIgnoreCase(reverseString)) {
return true;
else {
return false;
}
}
Many ways to do it. I guess the key is to do it in the most efficient way possible (without looping the string). I would do it as a char array which can be reversed easily (using C#).
string mystring = "abracadabra";
char[] str = mystring.ToCharArray();
Array.Reverse(str);
string revstring = new string(str);
if (mystring.equals(revstring))
{
Console.WriteLine("String is a Palindrome");
}
In Ruby, converting to lowercase and stripping everything not alphabetic:
def isPalindrome( string )
( test = string.downcase.gsub( /[^a-z]/, '' ) ) == test.reverse
end
But that feels like cheating, right? No pointers or anything! So here's a C version too, but without the lowercase and character stripping goodness:
#include <stdio.h>
int isPalindrome( char * string )
{
char * i = string;
char * p = string;
while ( *++i ); while ( i > p && *p++ == *--i );
return i <= p && *i++ == *--p;
}
int main( int argc, char **argv )
{
if ( argc != 2 )
{
fprintf( stderr, "Usage: %s <word>\n", argv[0] );
return -1;
}
fprintf( stdout, "%s\n", isPalindrome( argv[1] ) ? "yes" : "no" );
return 0;
}
Well, that was fun - do I get the job ;^)
Using Java, using Apache Commons String Utils:
public boolean isPalindrome(String phrase) {
phrase = phrase.toLowerCase().replaceAll("[^a-z]", "");
return StringUtils.reverse(phrase).equals(phrase);
}