Data Structures & Algorithms Interview Questions

叶 路. - "from collections import deque def updateword(words, startword, end_word): if end_word not in words: return None # Early exit if end_word is not in the dictionary queue = deque([(start_word, 0)]) # (word, steps) visited = set([start_word]) # Keep track of visited words while queue: word, steps = queue.popleft() if word == end_word: return steps # Found the target word, return steps for i in range(len(word)): "See full answer

Frederick K. - "\# An program that prints out the peak elements in a list of integers. Pseudocode: 1. Define a function that takes a list of integers as input. 2. Initialize an empty list to store the peak elements. 3. Loop through the list of integers. 4. For each element, check if it is greater than its neighbors. 5. If it is, add it to the list of peak elements. 6. Return the list of peak elements. def findpeakelements(nums): if not nums: return [] peaks = [] n = len(nums"See full answer

Gaurav B. - "class TreeNode(var val: Int, var left: TreeNode? = null, var right: TreeNode? = null) fun isAverageOfDescendants(root: TreeNode?): Boolean { fun helper(node: TreeNode?): Triple { if (node == null) return Triple(0, 0, true) val (leftSum, leftCount, leftValid) = helper(node.left) val (rightSum, rightCount, rightValid) = helper(node.right) val totalSum = leftSum + rightSum val totalCount = leftCount + rightCount // If leaf n"See full answer

Balasubramanian R. - "Inorder traversal of the tree should be the solution for this problem."See full answer

Yeshwanth D. - "Was this for an entry level engineer role?"See full answer

Rahul J. - "Constraints: 4-direction moves; no mode switching (pick exactly one of {1=bicycle, 2=bike, 3=car, 4=bus} for the full trip). Per-mode search: If a mode’s per-step time/cost are uniform, run BFS on allowed cells. Then totaltime = steps × timeperstep, tie-break by steps × costper_step. If time/cost vary by cell (given matrices), run Dijkstra per mode minimizing (totaltime, totalcost) lexicographically. Maintain the best ⟨time, cost⟩ per cell; relax when the new pair is strictly better. S"See full answer

Richard W. - "int getMaxWater(vector& nums) { int n = nums.size(); int mx = INT_MIN; int i=0, j=n-1; while(i<j) { int water = (j - i) * min(nums[i], nums[j]); mx = max(mx, water); if(nums[i] < nums[j]){ i++; } else { j--; } } return mx; } `"See full answer

Sravanthi M. - "public static boolean isPalindrome(String str){ boolean flag = true; int len = str.length()-1; int j = len; for(int i=0;i<=len/2;i++){ if(str.charAt(i)!=str.charAt(j--)){ flag = false; break; } } return flag; }"See full answer

Aashka C. - "Sorted the array and stored the minimum difference in a variable and then traversed the array for the pairs having minimum difference"See full answer

Rick E. - " O(n) - characters in the string O(n) - stack def identify_adjacent(s: str, k: int) -> str: stack = [] n = len(s) for ch in s: if stack: topch, topcnt = stack[-1] if top_ch == ch: top_cnt += 1 stack[-1] = (ch, top_cnt) else: top_cnt = 1 stack.append((ch,1)) if top_cnt == k: stack.pop() else: stack.append"See full answer

Karan K. - "2 Approaches: 1) The more intuitive approach is doing a multi-source BFS from all cats and storing the distance of closest cats. Then do a dfs/bfs from rat to bread. Time Complexity: O(mn + 4^L) where L is path length, worst case L could be mn Space Complexity: O(m*n) 2) The first approach should be fine for interviews. But if they ask to optimize it further, you can use Binary Search. Problems like "Finding max of min distance" or "Finding min of max" could be usually solved by BS. "See full answer

Anni P. - "I firstly discuss the brute force approach in O(n^2) time complexity , than i moved to O(nlogn) tine complexity than i discussed the O(n) time complexity and O(n) space complexity . But interviewer want more optimised solution , in O(n) time complexity without using extra space , The solution wants O(1) space complexity i have to do changes in same array without using any space . This method is something like i have to place positive values to its original position by swapping and rest negativ"See full answer

Srikant V. - "Used Recursive approach to traverse the binary search tree and sum the values of the nodes that fall within the specified range [low, high]"See full answer

VContaineers - " Compare alternate houses i.e for each house starting from the third, calculate the maximum money that can be stolen up to that house by choosing between: Skipping the current house and taking the maximum money stolen up to the previous house. Robbing the current house and adding its value to the maximum money stolen up to the house two steps back. package main import ( "fmt" ) // rob function calculates the maximum money a robber can steal func maxRob(nums []int) int { ln"See full answer

Alfred O. - "We can use dictionary to store cache items so that our read / write operations will be O(1). Each time we read or update an existing record, we have to ensure the item is moved to the back of the cache. This will allow us to evict the first item in the cache whenever the cache is full and we need to add new records also making our eviction O(1) Instead of normal dictionary, we will use ordered dictionary to store cache items. This will allow us to efficiently move items to back of the cache a"See full answer

Anonymous Goat - "Batch Packing Problem In Amazon’s massive warehouse inventory, there are different types of products. You are given an array products of size n, where products[i] represents the number of items of product type i. These products need to be packed into batches for shipping. The batch packing must adhere to the following conditions: No two items in the same batch can be of the same product type. The number of items packed in the current batch must be strictly greater than the number pack"See full answer

Sohum S. - "I would assume that this is similar to an intervals question. Meeting Rooms II (https://www.lintcode.com/problem/919/?fromId=203&_from=collection) on Leetcode seems like the closest comparison, it's a premium question so I linked Lintcode. I'm assuming that we also need to just return the minimum number of cars used. You need to sort for the most optimal solution, so you're constrained by an O(nlogn) time complexity. So any sorting solution could work (using a heap, sorting the array input arra"See full answer

Nilay B. - "int reverse(int x) { int rev = 0; bool isNegative = false; if(x 0){ int r = x % 10; rev = rev * 10 + r; x = x / 10; } if(isNegative){ return -rev; } return rev; } `"See full answer