LeetCode Q323: Number of Connected Components in an Undirected Graph

Given n nodes labeled from 0 to n - 1 and a list of undirected edges (each edge is a pair of nodes), write a function to find the number of connected components in an undirected graph.

Example 1:

     0          3
     |          |
     1 --- 2    4

Given n = 5 and edges = [[0, 1], [1, 2], [3, 4]], return 2.

Example 2:

     0           4
     |           |
     1 --- 2 --- 3

Given n = 5 and edges = [[0, 1], [1, 2], [2, 3], [3, 4]], return 1.

Solution 1:

BFS

Solution 2:
Union Find

LeetCode Q322: Coin Change

You are given coins of different denominations and a total amount of money amount. Write a function to compute the fewest number of coins that you need to make up that amount. If that amount of money cannot be made up by any combination of the coins, return -1.

Example 1:
coins = [1, 2, 5], amount = 11
return 3 (11 = 5 + 5 + 1)

Example 2:
coins = [2], amount = 3
return -1.

Note:
You may assume that you have an infinite number of each kind of coin.

Solution:

Using DP.

Amount[N] = min{Amount[N-coin[1]]+1, ..., Amount[N-coin[k]]+1}

Round 2 solution:

Round 3 solution:

LeetCode Q321: Create Maximum Number (hard)

Given two arrays of length m and n with digits 0-9 representing two numbers. Create the maximum number of length k <= m + n from digits of the two. The relative order of the digits from the same array must be preserved. Return an array of the k digits. You should try to optimize your time and space complexity.

Example 1:

nums1 = [3, 4, 6, 5]
nums2 = [9, 1, 2, 5, 8, 3]
k = 5
return [9, 8, 6, 5, 3]

Example 2:

nums1 = [6, 7]
nums2 = [6, 0, 4]
k = 5
return [6, 7, 6, 0, 4]

Example 3:

nums1 = [3, 9]
nums2 = [8, 9]
k = 3
return [9, 8, 9]

Solution:
First, this question remind me of my answer to LeetCode Q316 Remove Duplicate Letters, in which you should use greedy algorithm to choose optimal answer in current step. Actually, this question is similar to Q316 in the sense that we do need to be greedy when choosing each digit.

Since the order of numbers chosen from each array should keep their original order, this means, the number composed with these chosen digits has to be the largest one among all number chosen from the same array. So, if two numbers chosen from both arrays can be both the largest ones, the number merged from them must be the largest too!

This is the key of solving this problem.

This question takes me entire morning to solve, and have a lot of corner cases you should take care of.

LeetCode Q320: Generalized Abbreviation

Write a function to generate the generalized abbreviations of a word.

Example:

Given word = "word", return the following list (order does not matter):

["word", "1ord", "w1rd", "wo1d", "wor1", "2rd", "w2d", "wo2", "1o1d", "1or1", "w1r1", "1o2", "2r1", "3d", "w3", "4"]

Solution:
I was totally confused when this question first come to me. I can't figure out what pattern is hidden behind example results.

However, if you can consider a string a bit array, then represent it using digit or characters is no difference than setting bit to 1 or 0.

So, for a given string with n characters, there are totally 2^n ways to represent it

When this is clear, we can easily solve it using backtracking. Although we could even use bit manipulation to speed up, due to time limitation, we use a vector instead.




Round 2 solution:

LeetCode Q317: Shortest Distance from All Buildings (hard)

You want to build a house on an empty land which reaches all buildings in the shortest amount of distance. You can only move up, down, left and right. You are given a 2D grid of values 0, 1 or 2, where:

• Each 0 marks an empty land which you can pass by freely.
• Each 1 marks a building which you cannot pass through.
• Each 2 marks an obstacle which you cannot pass through.

For example, given three buildings at (0,0), (0,4), (2,2), and an obstacle at (0,2):

1 - 0 - 2 - 0 - 1
|   |   |   |   |
0 - 0 - 0 - 0 - 0
|   |   |   |   |
0 - 0 - 1 - 0 - 0

The point (1,2) is an ideal empty land to build a house, as the total travel distance of 3+3+1=7 is minimal. So return 7.

Note:
There will be at least one building. If it is not possible to build such house according to the above rules, return -1.

Solution:

Use BFS, and only expand to empty land which can be reached by all previous tested buildings.

LeetCode Q319: Bulb Switcher

There are n bulbs that are initially off. You first turn on all the bulbs. Then, you turn off every second bulb. On the third round, you toggle every third bulb (turning on if it's off or turning off if it's on). For the ith round, you toggle every i bulb. For the nth round, you only toggle the last bulb. Find how many bulbs are on after n rounds.

Example:

Given n = 3. 

At first, the three bulbs are [off, off, off].
After first round, the three bulbs are [on, on, on].
After second round, the three bulbs are [on, off, on].
After third round, the three bulbs are [on, off, off]. 

So you should return 1, because there is only one bulb is on.

LeetCode Q318: Maximum Product of Word Lengths

Given a string array words, find the maximum value of length(word[i]) * length(word[j]) where the two words do not share common letters. You may assume that each word will contain only lower case letters. If no such two words exist, return 0.

Example 1:

Given ["abcw", "baz", "foo", "bar", "xtfn", "abcdef"]
Return 16
The two words can be "abcw", "xtfn".

Example 2:

Given ["a", "ab", "abc", "d", "cd", "bcd", "abcd"]
Return 4
The two words can be "ab", "cd".

Example 3:

Given ["a", "aa", "aaa", "aaaa"]
Return 0
No such pair of words.

Solution:

Use bit manipulation to speed up. When  char string appears in a question and is asked to do something related to check whether identical string, most likely you need to use bit manipulation.