How to solve Permutation of a phone number problem - c++

Question

The Problem:
A company is distributing phone numbers to its employees to make things easier. the next digit cannot be equal to the last is the only rule for example 0223 is not allowed while 2023 is allowed. At least three digits will be excluded every time. Write a function that takes in a length of the phone number and the digits that will be excluded. The function should print all possible phone numbers.
I got this question in an interview and I have seen one like it before at my university. It is a permutation problem. My question is what is the best way or decent way to solve this without a million for loops.
I do understand that this is technically how it works
length of phone number = 3;
[0-9], [0-9] excluding the last digit, [0-9] excluding the last digit
but I am unsure on how the best way to turn this into code. Any language is accepted!
thank you:
Also I might be asking this in the wrong place. please let me know if I am.

Answer 1

A simple way to solve this problem could be using Recursion. Here's my commented C++ code:
void solve(int depth, int size, vector <int> &curr_seq){
// If the recursion depth is equal to size, that means we've decided size
// numbers, which means that curr_seq.size() == size. In other words, we've
// decided enough numbers at this point to create a complete phone number, so
// we print it and return.
if(depth == size){
for(int item : curr_seq){
cout << item;
}
cout << "\n";
return;
}
// Try appending every possible digit to the current phone number
for(int i = 0; i <= 9; ++i){
// Make sure to only append the digit i if it is not equal to the last digit
// of the phone number. We can also append it, however, if curr_seq
// is empty (because that means that we haven't decided the 1st digit yet).
if(curr_seq.empty() || curr[curr.size() - 1] != i){
curr_seq.push_back(i);
solve(depth + 1, size, curr);
curr_seq.pop_back();
}
}
}

Answer 2

I think I like the recursive solution, but you can also just generate all permutations up to the limit (iterate), filter out any with repeating digits, and print the successful candidates:
#include <iomanip>
#include <iostream>
#include <sstream>
using namespace std;
// Because C/C++ still has no integer power function.
int ipow(int base, int exp) {
int result = 1;
for (;;) {
if (exp & 1)
result *= base;
exp >>= 1;
if (!exp)
return result;
base *= base;
}
}
void noconsec(const int len) {
int lim = ipow(10, len);
// For e.g. len 4 (lim 10000),
// obviously 00xx won't work, so skip anything smaller than lim / 100.
int start = (len <= 2) ? 0 : (lim / 100);
for (int num = start;num < lim;num++) {
// Convert to string.
std::stringstream ss;
ss << std::setw(len) << std::setfill('0') << num;
std::string num_s = ss.str();
// Skip any consecutive digits.
bool is_okay = true;
auto prev_digit = num_s[0];
for (int digit_idx = 1;digit_idx < num_s.length();digit_idx++) {
auto digit = num_s[digit_idx];
if (prev_digit == digit) {
is_okay = false;
}
prev_digit = digit;
}
// Output result.
if (is_okay) {
cout << num_s << "\n";
}
}
}
int main(const int argc, const char * const argv[]) {
noconsec(4);
}
Differences to note, this needs an integer power function to compute the limit. Converting an int to a string and then checking the string is more complex than constructing the string directly. I guess it could be useful if you have a list of integers already, but mostly I did it for fun.