Data Structures & Algorithms Interview Questions

Stanley Y. - "First of all, stack and heap memory are abstraction on top of the hardware by the compiler. The hardware is not aware of stack and heap memory. There is only a single piece of memory that a program has access to. The compiler creates the concepts of stack and heap memory to run the programs efficiently. Programs use stack memory to store local variables and a few important register values such as frame pointer and return address for program counter. This makes it easier for the compiler to gene"See full answer

Michael B. - "Problem: Given an input string txt consisting of alphanumeric characters and the parentheses characters '(' & ')', write a function which removes the minimum number of characters to return a version of the string with properly balanced parenthesis. Answer: You can do this with a counter. Psuedo-Python Start with counter = 0 output = [] Iterate through the string, every time you encounter a '(', increment the counter. Add the character to the output. If you encounter a ')', decrement the coun"See full answer

Michael B. - "Write a function which Caesar ciphers all the strings so that the first character is "a". Use ascii code points and the modulo operator to do this. Use this function to create a hashmap between each string and the CC-a string. Then go through each key:value pair in the hashmap, and use the CC-a ciphered value as the key in a new defaultdict(list), adding the original string to the value field in the output."See full answer

Matthew K. - " function climbStairs(n) { // 4 iterations of Dynamic Programming solutions: // Step 1: Recursive: // if (n <= 2) return n // return climbStairs(n-1) + climbStairs(n-2) // Step 2: Top-down Memoization // const memo = {0:0, 1:1, 2:2} // function f(x) { // if (x in memo) return memo[x] // memo[x] = f(x-1) + f(x-2) // return memo[x] // } // return f(n) // Step 3: Bottom-up Tabulation // const tab = [0,1,2] // f"See full answer

Avon T. - "Initialize left pointer: Set a left pointer left to 0. Iterate through the array: Iterate through the array from left to right. If the current element is not 0, swap it with the element at the left pointer and increment left. Time complexity: O(n). The loop iterates through the entire array once, making it linear time. Space complexity: O(1). The algorithm operates in-place, modifying the input array directly without using additional data structures. "See full answer

Gabriele G. - "Without using a recursive approach, one can perform a post-order traversal by removing the parent nodes from the stack only if children were visited: def diameterOfTree(root): if root is None: return 0 diameter = 0 stack = deque([[root, False]]) # (node, visited) node_heights = {} while stack: curr_node, visited = stack[-1] if visited: heightleft = nodeheights.get(curr_node.left, 0) heightright = nodehe"See full answer

Victor H. - "There is a faster approach that solves the problem in O(n) time: def find_duplicates(arr1, arr2): arr1 = set(arr1) res = [] for num in arr2: if num in arr1: res.append(num) return res `"See full answer

Tiago R. - "function serialize(list) { for (let i=0; i 0xFFFF) { throw new Exception(String ${list[i]} is too long!); } const prefix = String.fromCharCode(length); list[i] = ${prefix}${list[i]}; console.log(list[i]) } return list.join(''); } function deserialize(s) { let i=0; const length = s.length; const output = []; while (i < length) { "See full answer

B. T. - "You are given a string S and a number K as input, and your task is to print S to console output considering that, at most, you can print K characters per line. Example: S = "abracadabra sample" K = 11 Output: abracadabra sample Note that this problem requires the interviewee gather extra requirements from the interviewer (e.g. do we care about multiple white spaces? what if the length of a word is greater than K, ...)"See full answer

Anonymous Wombat - "Was the statement very similar to the leetcode or was it changed and only the main idea remained?"See full answer

Jerry O. - "\# Definition for a binary tree node. class TreeNode: def init(self, val=0, left=None, right=None): self.val = val self.left = left self.right = right class Solution: def maxPathSum(self, root: TreeNode) -> int: self.max_sum = float('-inf')"See full answer

Anonymous Unicorn - "Count items between indices within compartments compartments are delineated by by: '|' items are identified by: '*' input_inventory = "*||||" inputstartidxs = [1, 4, 6] inputendidxs = [9, 5, 8] expected_output = [3, 0, 1] Explanation: "*||||" 0123456789... indices ++ + # within compartments ^ start_idx = 1 ^ end_idx = 9 -- - # within idxs but not within compartments "*||||" 0123456789... indices "See full answer

Divya R. - "public static Integer[] findLargest(int[] input, int m) { if(input==null || input.length==0) return null; PriorityQueue minHeap=new PriorityQueue(); for(int i:input) { if(minHeap.size()(int)top){ minHeap.poll(); minHeap.add(i); } } } Integer[] res=minHeap.toArray(new Integer[0]); Arrays.sort(res); return res; }"See full answer

Batman X. - "def friend_distance(friends, userA, userB): step = 0 total_neighs = set() llen = len(total_neighs) total_neighs.add(userB) while len(total_neighs)!=llen: s = set() step += 1 llen = len(total_neighs) for el in total_neighs: nes = neighbours(friends, userA, el) if userA in nes: return step for p in nes: s.add(p) for el in s: total_neighs.add(el) return -1 def neighbours(A,n1, n2): out = set() for i in range(len(A[n2])): if An2: out.add(i) return out"See full answer

Ankita G. - "Merge Sort"See full answer

Marc S. - "This is just a two line solve, I'm not sure why it's being made more complicated? function productExceptSelf(nums) { // your code goes here const product = nums.reduce((acc, val) => acc * val, 1); return nums.map(num => num === 0 ? 0 : Math.floor(product/num)); } `"See full answer

Gabriele G. - "def find_first(array: List[int], num: int) -> int: lo = 0 hi = len(array)-1 while lo = num: hi = mid - 1 if lo == mid and array[mid] == num: return mid else: array[mid] < num lo = mid + 1 return -1 `"See full answer

Rajendra D. - "Questions to ask : Are there negative values in the input array? Interview : YES Will the product of two number fit into 32-bit Integer. If not, will it fit 64-bit Integer. If not, then is it safe to use Big Integer? Interview : let's worry only about 32 bit Integer What should we return if the input array is null or size (size of input array) is less than 2? Return 0 From above Information: General approach is as follows : a) Track smallest 2 elements in the array -> p"See full answer