An interview question - c++

Given a linked list of T size , select first 2n nodes and delete first n nodes from them; Then do it for the next 2n nodes and so on...
For example-
Let's consider a linked list of size 7:
`1->2->3->4->5->6->7`
If n = 2, the desired output is :
`1->2->5->6->7`
I didn't understand what this problem is actually indicating.Could somebody help me to understand the problem ?
EDIT : Adding C and C++ tags so that this may reach to more eye balls, and of-course those are only two languages allowed in the interview itself.

That actually looks like it should say:
Given a linked list of T size , select first 2n nodes and delete last n nodes from them; Then do it for the next 2n nodes and so on...
or:
Given a linked list of T size , select first 2n nodes and keep first n nodes from them; Then do it for the next 2n nodes and so on...
That would mean select 1,2,3,4 then delete 3,4 (or keep 1,2 which is the same thing). Then select 5,6,7,8, not possible so stop.

I think it's even simpler than #paxdiablo indicates ...
do
take n
skip n
until you run out of elements to take or skip

Related

Riddle puzzle in clingo

So in the tag prolog someone wanted to solve the "the giant cat army riddle" by Dan Finkel (see video / Link for description of the puzzle).
Since I want to improve in answer set programming I hereby challenge you to solve the puzzle more efficient than me. You will find my solution as answer. I'll accept the fastest running answer (except if it's using dirty hacks).
Rules:
hardcoding the length of the list (or something similar) counts as dirty hack.
The output has to be in the predicate r/2, where it's first argument is the index of the list and the second its entry.
Time measured is for the first valid answer.
num(0..59).
%valid operation pairs
op(N*N,N):- N=2..7.
% no need to add operations that start with 14
op(Ori,New):- num(Ori), New = Ori+7, num(New), Ori!=14.
op(Ori,New):- num(Ori), New = Ori+5, num(New), Ori!=14.
%iteratively create new numbers from old numbers
l(0,0).
{l(T+1,New) : op(Old,New)} = 1 :- l(T,Old), num(T+1), op(Old,_).
%no number twice
:- 2 #sum {1,T : l(T,Value)}, num(Value).
%2 before 10 before 14
%linear encoding
reached(T,10) :- l(T,10).
reached(T+1,10) :- reached(T,10), num(T+1).
:- reached(T,10), l(T,2).
:- l(T,14), l(T+1,_).
%looks nicer, but quadratic
%:- l(T2,2), l(T10,10), T10<T2.
%:- l(T14,14), l(T10,10), T14<T10.
%we must have these three numbers in the list somewhere
:- not l(_,2).
:- not l(_,10).
:- not l(_,14).
#show r(T,V) : l(T,V).
#show.
Having a slightly more ugly encoding improves grounding a lot (which was your main problem).
I restricted op/2 to not start with 14, as this should be the last element in the list
I do create the list iteratively, this may not be as nice, but at least for the start of the list it already removed impossible to reach values via grounding. So you will never have l(1,33) or l(2,45) etc...
Also list generation stops when reaching the value 14, as no more operation is possible/needed.
I also added a linear scaling version of the "before" section, although it is not really necessary for this short list (but a cool trick in general if you have long lists!) This is called "chaining".
Also note that your show statement is non-trivial and does create some constraints/variables.
I hope this helps, otherwise feel free to ask such questions also on our potassco mailing list ;)
My first attempt is to generate a permutation of numbers and force successor elements to be connected by one of the 3 operations (+5, +7 or sqrt). I predefine the operations to avoid choosing/counting problems. Testing for <60 is not necessary since the output of an operation has to be a number between 0 and 59. The generated List l/2 is forwarded to the output r/2 until the number 14 appears. I guess there is plenty of room to outrun my solution.
num(0..59).
%valid operation pairs
op(N*N,N):- N=2..7.
op(Ori,New):- num(Ori), New = Ori+7, num(New).
op(Ori,New):- num(Ori), New = Ori+5, num(New).
%for each position one number
l(0,0).
{l(T,N):num(N)}==1:-num(T).
{l(T,N):num(T)}==1:-num(N).
% following numbers are connected with an operation until 14
:- l(T,Ori), not op(Ori,New), l(T+1,New), l(End,14), T+1<=End.
% 2 before 10 before 14
:- l(T2,2), l(T10,10), T10<T2.
:- l(T14,14), l(T10,10), T14<T10.
% output
r(T,E):- l(T,E), l(End,14), T<=End.
#show r/2.
first Answer:
r(0,0) r(1,5) r(2,12) r(3,19) r(4,26) r(5,31) r(6,36) r(7,6)
r(8,11) r(9,16) r(10,4) r(11,2) r(12,9) r(13,3) r(14,10) r(15,15)
r(16,20) r(17,25) r(18,30) r(19,37) r(20,42) r(21,49) r(22,7) r(23,14)
There are multiple possible lists with different length.

how to calculate nth term of mth row of this table?

there is a table which grows as
1,1
1,1,2
1,1,3,3
1,1,4,4,6
1,1,5,5,10,10
1,1,6,6,15,15,20
.....and so on
If i want to find an specific element of the table like if I want to find 4th element of 6th row then the answer will be 6 but if I want to find the nth element of mth row for any n>=1 m>=1 then how to do it?
These numbers look like binomial coefficients, so this "table" could be Pascal's triangle row-wise re-ordered by size.
Though, this is just one of the infinitely many "tables" that'd start like this. If you don't name a specific production rule or another way to deduce arbitrary values of the "table", there's no way telling for sure which of those infinitely many "tables" you have here.
I assume you want to hold the values in a kind of table without wasting memory by for example giving each line more slots than necessary.
To do that I'd suggest a vector of vectors (assuming your values are integers):
std::vector< std::vector<int> > table;
Provided you are sure that a value at (m, n) exists you can get it with:
int value = table[m][n];
(Note that m and n count from 0.)
If you're not sure use the safer
int value = table.at(m).at(n);
which will throw an exception if (m, n) doesn't exist.
To add a row you could call
table.resize(table.size() + 1);
and to add a column to a row
table[m].resize(table[m].size() + 1);
I'd recommend to put the table into the protected or private section of a special class and add functions to access the elements as needed.

power function and arrays in c++

I'm trying to write a function that will take an array or vector and have its values taken to a "power of" and then display it's values. I'm not too familiar with arrays but simply put I'm trying to create something like
n = {2^1, 3^1, 5^1,2^2,3^2,5^2,....}
the "power of" is going to be looped.
I then plan to sort the array, and display 1500th term.
this problem corresponds to prime number sequence only divisible by 2 , 3 & 5;
I'm trying to find a more time efficient way than just if statements and mod operators.
If I remember correctly this is the Ugly Numbers problem I've faced some years ago in the UVa.
The idea to solve this problem is to use a priority queue with the numbers 2, 3 and 5 as initial values. At each step remove the topmost value t and insert the values 2*t, 3*t and 5*t in the priority queue, repeat this steps till the 1500th term is found.
See this forum for more info: http://online-judge.uva.es/board/viewtopic.php?t=93

Partition in Equivalence sets

I have a simple, non-dirictional tree T. I should find a path named A and another named B that A and B have no common vertex. The perpuse is to maxmize the Len(A)*Len(B).
I figured this problem is similer to Partition Problem, except in Partition Problem you have a set but here you have a Equivalence set. The solution is to find two uncrossed path that Len(A) ~ Len(B) ~ [n-1/2]. Is this correnct? how should I impliment such algorithm?
First of all. I Think you are looking at this problem the wrong way. As I understand it you have a graph related problem. What you do is
Build a maximum spanning tree and find the length L.
Now, you say that the two paths can't have any vertex in common, so we have to remove an edge to archieve this. I assume that every edge wheight in your graph is 1. So sum of the two paths A and B are L-1 after you removed an edge. The problem is now that you have to remove an edge such that the product of len(a) and len(b) is maximized. You do that by removeing the edge in et most 'middel' of L. Why, the problem is of the same as optimizing the area of a rectangle with a fixed perimeter. A short youtube video on the subject can be found here.
Note if your edge wheights are not equal to 1, then you have a harder problem, because there may exist more than one maximum spanning tree. But you may be able to split them in different ways, if this is the case, write me back, then I will think about a solution, but i do not have one at hand.
Best of luck.
I think there is a dynamic programming solution that is just about tractable if path length is just the number of links in the paths (so links don't have weights).
Work from the leaves up. At each node you need to keep track of the best pair of solutions confined to the subtree with root at that node, and, for each k, the best solution with a path of length k terminating in that node and a second path of maximum length somewhere below that node and not touching the path.
Given this info for all descendants of a node, you can produce similar info for that node, and so work your way up to the route.
You can see that this amount of information is required if you consider a tree that is in fact just a line of nodes. The best solution for a line of nodes is to split it in two, so if you have only worked out the best solution when the line is of length 2n + 1 you won't have the building blocks you need for a line of length 2n + 3.

O(log n) index update and search

I need to keep track of indexes in a large text file. I have been keeping a std::map of indexes and accompanying data as a quick hack. If the user is on character 230,400 in the text, I can display any meta-data for the text.
Now that my maps are getting larger, I'm hitting some speed issues (as expected).
For example, if the text is modified at the beginning, I need to increment the indexes after that position in the map by one, an O(N) operation.
What's a good way to change this to O(log N) complexity? I've been looking at AVL Arrays, which is close.
I'm hoping for O(log n) time for updates and searches. For example, if the user is on character 500,000 in the text array, I want to very quickly find if there is any meta data for that character.
(Forgot to add: The user can add meta data whenever they like)
Easy. Make a binary tree of offsets.
The value of any offset is computed by traversing the tree from the leaf to the root adding offsets any time a node is a right child.
Then if you add text early in the file you only need to update the offsets for nodes which are parents of the offsets that change. That is say you added text before the very first offset, you add the number of characters added to the root node. now one half of your offsets have been corrected. Now traverse to the left child and add the offset again. Now 3/4s of offsets have been updated. Continue traversing left children adding the offset until all the offsets are updated.
#OP:
Say you have a text buffer with 8 characters, and 4 offsets into the odd bytes:
the tree: 5
/ \
3 2
/ \ / \
1 0 0 0
sum of right
children (indices) 1 3 5 7
Now say you inserted 2 bytes at offset 4. Buffer was:
01234567
Now its
0123xx4567
So you modify just nodes that dominate parts of the array that changed. In this case just
the root node needs to be modified.
the tree: 7
/ \
3 2
/ \ / \
1 0 0 0
sum of right
children (indices) 1 3 7 9
The summation rule is walking from leaf to root I sum to myself, the value of my parent if I am that parent's right child.
To find if there is an index at my current location I start at the root and ask is this offset greater smaller than my location. If yes I traverse left and add nothing. If no I traverse right and add the value to my index. If at the end of traversal my value is equal to my index then yes there is an annotation. You can do a similar traverals with a minimum and maximum index to find the node that dominates all the indices in the range, finding all the indices to the text I'm displaying.
Oh.. and this is just a toy example. In reality you need to periodically rebalance the tree otherwise there is a chance that if you keep adding new indices just in one part of the file you will get a tree which is way out of balance, and worst case performance would no longer be O(log2 n) but would be O(n). To keep the tree balanced you would need to implement a balanced binary tree like a "red/black tree". That would guarantee O(log2 n) performance where N is the number of metadatas.
Don't store indices! There's no way to possibly do that and simultaneously have performance better than O(n) - add a character at the beginning of the array and you'll have to increment n - 1 indices, no way around it.
But if you store substring lengths instead, you'd only have to change one per level of tree structure, bringing you up to O(log n). My (untested) solution would be to use a Rope with metadata attached to the nodes - you might need to play around with that a bit, but I think it's a solid foundation.
Hope that helps!