[Hackerrank Interview Preparation Kit] Warm-up Challenges

countingvalleys.md

Gary is an avid hiker. He tracks his hikes meticulously, paying close attention to small details like topography. During his last hike he took exactly n steps. For every step he took, he noted if it was an uphill, U, or a downhill, D step. Gary's hikes start and end at sea level and each step up or down represents a unit change in altitude. We define the following terms:

A mountain is a sequence of consecutive steps above sea level, starting with a step up from sea level and ending with a step down to sea level. A valley is a sequence of consecutive steps below sea level, starting with a step down from sea level and ending with a step up to sea level. Given Gary's sequence of up and down steps during his last hike, find and print the number of valleys he walked through.

For example, if Gary's path is s =[DDUUUUDD], he first enters a valley 2 units deep. Then he climbs out an up onto a mountain 2 units high. Finally, he returns to sea level and ends his hike.

Function Description

Complete the countingValleys function in the editor below. It must return an integer that denotes the number of valleys Gary traversed.

countingValleys has the following parameter(s):

n: the number of steps Gary takes s: a string describing his path

Input Format

The first line contains an integer n, the number of steps in Gary's hike. The second line contains a single string s, of n characters that describe his path.

Constraints

• 2 ≤ n ≤ 10
• s[i] ∈ {UD}

Output Format

Print a single integer that denotes the number of valleys Gary walked through during his hike.

Sample Input

8
UDDDUDUU

Sample Output

1

Explanation

If we represent _ as sea level, a step up as /, and a step down as , Gary's hike can be drawn as:

_/\      _
   \    /
    \/\/

He enters and leaves one valley.

countingvalleys.py

#!/bin/python3

import math
import os
import random
import re
import sys

# Complete the countingValleys function below.
def countingValleys(n, s):
    valley=0
    land=0
    for i in s:

        if i=='U':

            valley+=1

        if i=='D':

            valley+=-1

        if valley==0 and i=='U':

            valley+=1
    return valley
    

if __name__ == '__main__':
    fptr = open(os.environ['OUTPUT_PATH'], 'w')

    n = int(input())

    s = input()

    result = countingValleys(n, s)

    fptr.write(str(result) + '\n')

    fptr.close()

sockMerchant.md

John works at a clothing store. He has a large pile of socks that he must pair by color for sale. Given an array of integers representing the color of each sock, determine how many pairs of socks with matching colors there are.

For example, there are n = 7 socks with colors ar =[1,2,1,2,1,3,2] . There is one pair of color 1 and one of color 2 . There are three odd socks left, one of each color. The number of pairs is 2.

Function Description

Complete the sockMerchant function in the editor below. It must return an integer representing the number of matching pairs of socks that are available.

sockMerchant has the following parameter(s):

• n: the number of socks in the pile
• ar: the colors of each sock

Input Format

The first line contains an integer n, the number of socks represented in ar. The second line contains n space-separated integers describing the colors ar[i] of the socks in the pile.

Constraints

• 1<=n<=100
• 1<=ar[i]<=100 where 0<=i<n

Output Format

Return the total number of matching pairs of socks that John can sell.

Sample Input

9
10 20 20 10 10 30 50 10 20

Sample Output 3

sockmerchant.py

#!/bin/python3

import math
import os
import random
import re
import sys
from collections import Counter

# Complete the sockMerchant function below.
def sockMerchant(n, ar):
    # solution uses v as value toensure quotient returned is 0, checks value count through .items
    return sum( v//2 for k,v in Counter(ar).items())
if __name__ == '__main__':
    fptr = open(os.environ['OUTPUT_PATH'], 'w')

    n = int(input())

    ar = list(map(int, input().rstrip().split()))

    result = sockMerchant(n, ar)

    fptr.write(str(result) + '\n')

    fptr.close()