My software development journey
Here is the link to the original problem. Let us try to simplify the problem statement a little bit. There is a dinner house of infinite number of guests but finite number of pancakes. Each of them hold a plate which is either empty or has some pancakes in them. Every minute, one of the…
Every year Google conducts a competition called Codejam for programming enthusiasts. The qualification round for the year 2015 got finished yesterday. In this post, I am going to explain the solution approach for the first problem.You can read the problem from this link. I will try to give the abridged problem statement below. There are…
Given a number, how do we generate a smallest number which is greater than the given number and is a palindrome?Consider the following examplesInput Output3 49 1113 22767 777594 595898 909999 1001Here is the solution approach. This problem has multiple cases to be considered.Case 1: If all the digits in the number are ‘9’, the output…
Given an array of numbers, how do we find the minimum number of changes(additions/subtractions) to the elements so that each number in the array is same or equal. For example given the array {1, 2, 3, 4}, the minimum number of changes are 3. i.e we can choose any of the four elements and make…
Given a string containing the only symbols ‘+’ or ‘-‘, how do we find the minimum number of changes to transform it to a chain. A chain of length N is the sequence of alternative + and – symbols. For example “+-+-+” is a chain of length 5. Similarly “-+-+-+” is a chain of length…
Given an array of of size N, How do we find the longest sub-array with all non-zero elements? For example consider the array {34, 0, 18, 3, 0, 1, 4, 5, 0, 12}, the longest sub-array with non-zero elements is 3 i.e {1,4,5}. This problem is from Codechef. Follow this link to solve this problem…
This problem is from Codechef January challenge. Click on the link to try this problem on your own. The problem statement is as follows. Given an array of size N and two indices L and R. We need to find the GCD (Greatest Common Divisor) of all the array elements except in the range [L,R].…
Problem: Given a set of coordinates in a two dimensional plane, How do we find the area of a minimum square which includes all the points. The points can exist on the border also. For example consider two points (0,0), (1,2) we need a minimum 2*2 square to cover these points. Hence the area is…
This is a problem from Codeforces. Please follow this link to solve this problem on your own. The abridged problem statement is as follows. You are given an list of numbers, and sub-list size as input. The challenge is to find a sub-list such that the difference between the maximum and minimum numbers in that…
Given a string, how do you find the minimum number of characters to insert to make it a palindrome? For example given a string “abbc”, the number of characters to insert is 2, and the resulting palindrome is “cabbac” Take another example “abc”, we need to insert two characters at a minimum to make it…