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I have to find the the pair in an array which have maximum GCD. I tried different approach but all those solution doesn't run in time, time limit exceed in every solution.
So is there any efficient method to do so.
example =>
Input : arr[] : { 1 2 3 4 5 }
Output : 2
Explanation : Pair {2, 4} has GCD 2 which is highest. Other pairs have a GCD of 1.
I tried these solutions =>
brute force
brute force with Euclidean algorithm
By calculating the frequency of all the divisors of each number present in
the array. And then check which divisor have the frequency greater than 1
from last. (https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/find-pair-maximum-gcd-array)
All above mentioned solution doesn't work.
The link to the question is
https://practice.geeksforgeeks.org/problems/maximum-gcd-pair3534/1
We can use the same logic, divisor occurrence but with a simple optimization. Instead of calculating divisor for each number separately. We will calculate divisors collectively and calculate the answer accordingly. We will traverse each number and then it all multiple till max_element and will keep track of the number of elements for which the current number is the divisor and if the occurrence is greater than 1 we will update our answer. So the solution will be,
int MaxGcd(int n, int a[]) {
int mx = *max_element(a, a + n);
vector<int> cnt(mx + 1, 0);
vector<int> occurrence(mx + 1, 0);
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
occurrence[a[i]]++;
}
int ans = 1;
for (int i = 2; i <= mx; i++) {
for (int j = i; j <= mx; j += i) {
cnt[i] += occurrence[j];
if (cnt[i] > 1) {
ans = i;
}
}
}
return ans;
}
I was stuck in a problem studying dynamic programming.
I have a string of numbers. You need to find the length of the longest substring of the substrings in this string that has the sum of the first half of the numbers and the second half of the numbers.
For example,
Input string: 142124
Output : 6
When the input string is "142124", the sum of the numbers of the first half (142) and the number of the second half (124) is the same, so the entire given string becomes the longest substring we find. Therefore, the output is 6, the length of the entire string.
Input string: 9430723
Output: 4
The longest substring in this string that has the sum of the first half and the second half becomes "4307".
I solved this problem this way
int maxSubStringLength(char* str){
int n = strlen(str);
int maxLen = 0;
int sum[n][n];
for(int i=0; i<n; i++)
sum[i][i] = str[i] - '0';
for(int len =2; len <=n; len++){
for(int i = 0; i < n - len + 1; i++){
int j = i + len - 1;
int k = len / 2;
sum[i][j] = sum[i][j-k] + sum[j-k+1][j];
if(len%2 == 0 && sum[i][j-k] == sum[j-k+1][j] && len > maxLen)
maxLen = len;
}
}
return maxLen;
}
This code has a time complexity of O (n * n) and a space complexity of O (n * n).
However, this problem requires solving with O (1) space complexity with O (n * n) time complexity.
Is it possible to solve this problem with the space complexity of O (1)?
You can easily solve this problem with O(1) space complexity and O(n^2) time complexity.
Here is one aproach:
Go from m = 0 to n-2. This denotes the middle of the string (you split after the mth character).
For i = 1 to n (break if you get out of bounds). Build the left and right sums, if they are equal, compare i to best so far and update it if better.
Solution is 2 times best (because it denotes the half string).
In Java it would be something like this:
public int maxSubstringLength(String s) {
int best = 0;
for (int m = 0; m < s.length() - 1; m++) {
int l = 0; // left sum
int r = 0; // right sum
for (int i = 1; m - i + 1 >= 0 && m + i < s.length(); i++) {
l += s.charAt(m - i + 1);
r += s.charAt(m + i);
if (l == r && i > best)
best = i;
}
}
return 2 * best;
}
I recently came across this problem:
You are given height of n histograms each of width 1. You have to choose any two histograms such that if it starts raining and all other histograms(except the two you have selected) are removed, then the water collected between the two histograms is maximised.
Input:
9
3 2 5 9 7 8 1 4 6
Output:
25
Between third and last histogram.
This is a variant of Trapping rain water problem.
I tried two solutions but both had worst case complexity of N^2. How can we optimise further.
Sol1: Brute force for every pair.
int maxWaterCollected(vector<int> hist, int n) {
int ans = 0;
for (int i= 0; i < n; i++) {
for (int j = i + 1; j < n; j++) {
ans = max(ans, min(hist[i], hist[j]) * (j - i - 1));
}
}
return ans;
}
Sol2: Keep a sequence of histograms in increasing order of height. For every histogram, find its best histogram in this sequence. now, if all histograms are in increasing order then this solution also becomes N^2.
int maxWaterCollected(vector<int> hist, int n) {
vector< pair<int, int> > increasingSeq(1, make_pair(hist[0], 0)); // initialised with 1st element.
int ans = 0;
for (int i = 1; i < n; i++) {
// compute best result from current increasing sequence
for (int j = 0; j < increasingSeq.size(); j++) {
ans = max(ans, min(hist[i], increasingSeq[j].first) * (i - increasingSeq[j].second - 1));
}
// add this histogram to sequence
if (hist[i] > increasingSeq.back().first) {
increasingSeq.push_back(make_pair(hist[i], i));
}
}
return ans;
}
Use 2 iterators, one from begin() and one from end() - 1.
until the 2 iterator are equal:
Compare current result with the max, and keep the max
Move the iterator with smaller value (begin -> end or end -> begin)
Complexity: O(n).
Jarod42 has the right idea, but it's unclear from his terse post why his algorithm, described below in Python, is correct:
def candidates(hist):
l = 0
r = len(hist) - 1
while l < r:
yield (r - l - 1) * min(hist[l], hist[r])
if hist[l] <= hist[r]:
l += 1
else:
r -= 1
def maxwater(hist):
return max(candidates(hist))
The proof of correctness is by induction: the optimal solution either (1) belongs to the candidates yielded so far or (2) chooses histograms inside [l, r]. The base case is simple, because all histograms are inside [0, len(hist) - 1].
Inductively, suppose that we're about to advance either l or r. These cases are symmetric, so let's assume that we're about to advance l. We know that hist[l] <= hist[r], so the value is (r - l - 1) * hist[l]. Given any other right endpoint r1 < r, the value is (r1 - l - 1) * min(hist[l], hist[r1]), which is less because r - l - 1 > r1 - l - 1 and hist[l] >= min(hist[l], hist[r1]). We can rule out all of these solutions as suboptimal, so it's safe to advance l.
Most of us are familiar with the maximum sum subarray problem. I came across a variant of this problem which asks the programmer to output the maximum of all subarray sums modulo some number M.
The naive approach to solve this variant would be to find all possible subarray sums (which would be of the order of N^2 where N is the size of the array). Of course, this is not good enough. The question is - how can we do better?
Example: Let us consider the following array:
6 6 11 15 12 1
Let M = 13. In this case, subarray 6 6 (or 12 or 6 6 11 15 or 11 15 12) will yield maximum sum ( = 12 ).
We can do this as follow:
Maintaining an array sum which at index ith, it contains the modulus sum from 0 to ith.
For each index ith, we need to find the maximum sub sum that end at this index:
For each subarray (start + 1 , i ), we know that the mod sum of this sub array is
int a = (sum[i] - sum[start] + M) % M
So, we can only achieve a sub-sum larger than sum[i] if sum[start] is larger than sum[i] and as close to sum[i] as possible.
This can be done easily if you using a binary search tree.
Pseudo code:
int[] sum;
sum[0] = A[0];
Tree tree;
tree.add(sum[0]);
int result = sum[0];
for(int i = 1; i < n; i++){
sum[i] = sum[i - 1] + A[i];
sum[i] %= M;
int a = tree.getMinimumValueLargerThan(sum[i]);
result = max((sum[i] - a + M) % M, result);
tree.add(sum[i]);
}
print result;
Time complexity :O(n log n)
Let A be our input array with zero-based indexing. We can reduce A modulo M without changing the result.
First of all, let's reduce the problem to a slightly easier one by computing an array P representing the prefix sums of A, modulo M:
A = 6 6 11 2 12 1
P = 6 12 10 12 11 12
Now let's process the possible left borders of our solution subarrays in decreasing order. This means that we will first determine the optimal solution that starts at index n - 1, then the one that starts at index n - 2 etc.
In our example, if we chose i = 3 as our left border, the possible subarray sums are represented by the suffix P[3..n-1] plus a constant a = A[i] - P[i]:
a = A[3] - P[3] = 2 - 12 = 3 (mod 13)
P + a = * * * 2 1 2
The global maximum will occur at one point too. Since we can insert the suffix values from right to left, we have now reduced the problem to the following:
Given a set of values S and integers x and M, find the maximum of S + x modulo M
This one is easy: Just use a balanced binary search tree to manage the elements of S. Given a query x, we want to find the largest value in S that is smaller than M - x (that is the case where no overflow occurs when adding x). If there is no such value, just use the largest value of S. Both can be done in O(log |S|) time.
Total runtime of this solution: O(n log n)
Here's some C++ code to compute the maximum sum. It would need some minor adaptions to also return the borders of the optimal subarray:
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
int max_mod_sum(const vector<int>& A, int M) {
vector<int> P(A.size());
for (int i = 0; i < A.size(); ++i)
P[i] = (A[i] + (i > 0 ? P[i-1] : 0)) % M;
set<int> S;
int res = 0;
for (int i = A.size() - 1; i >= 0; --i) {
S.insert(P[i]);
int a = (A[i] - P[i] + M) % M;
auto it = S.lower_bound(M - a);
if (it != begin(S))
res = max(res, *prev(it) + a);
res = max(res, (*prev(end(S)) + a) % M);
}
return res;
}
int main() {
// random testing to the rescue
for (int i = 0; i < 1000; ++i) {
int M = rand() % 1000 + 1, n = rand() % 1000 + 1;
vector<int> A(n);
for (int i = 0; i< n; ++i)
A[i] = rand() % M;
int should_be = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < n; ++i) {
int sum = 0;
for (int j = i; j < n; ++j) {
sum = (sum + A[j]) % M;
should_be = max(should_be, sum);
}
}
assert(should_be == max_mod_sum(A, M));
}
}
For me, all explanations here were awful, since I didn't get the searching/sorting part. How do we search/sort, was unclear.
We all know that we need to build prefixSum, meaning sum of all elems from 0 to i with modulo m
I guess, what we are looking for is clear.
Knowing that subarray[i][j] = (prefix[i] - prefix[j] + m) % m (indicating the modulo sum from index i to j), our maxima when given prefix[i] is always that prefix[j] which is as close as possible to prefix[i], but slightly bigger.
E.g. for m = 8, prefix[i] being 5, we are looking for the next value after 5, which is in our prefixArray.
For efficient search (binary search) we sort the prefixes.
What we can not do is, build the prefixSum first, then iterate again from 0 to n and look for index in the sorted prefix array, because we can find and endIndex which is smaller than our startIndex, which is no good.
Therefore, what we do is we iterate from 0 to n indicating the endIndex of our potential max subarray sum and then look in our sorted prefix array, (which is empty at the beginning) which contains sorted prefixes between 0 and endIndex.
def maximumSum(coll, m):
n = len(coll)
maxSum, prefixSum = 0, 0
sortedPrefixes = []
for endIndex in range(n):
prefixSum = (prefixSum + coll[endIndex]) % m
maxSum = max(maxSum, prefixSum)
startIndex = bisect.bisect_right(sortedPrefixes, prefixSum)
if startIndex < len(sortedPrefixes):
maxSum = max(maxSum, prefixSum - sortedPrefixes[startIndex] + m)
bisect.insort(sortedPrefixes, prefixSum)
return maxSum
From your question, it seems that you have created an array to store the cumulative sums (Prefix Sum Array), and are calculating the sum of the sub-array arr[i:j] as (sum[j] - sum[i] + M) % M. (arr and sum denote the given array and the prefix sum array respectively)
Calculating the sum of every sub-array results in a O(n*n) algorithm.
The question that arises is -
Do we really need to consider the sum of every sub-array to reach the desired maximum?
No!
For a value of j the value (sum[j] - sum[i] + M) % M will be maximum when sum[i] is just greater than sum[j] or the difference is M - 1.
This would reduce the algorithm to O(nlogn).
You can take a look at this explanation! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u_ft5jCDZXk
There are already a bunch of great solutions listed here, but I wanted to add one that has O(nlogn) runtime without using a balanced binary tree, which isn't in the Python standard library. This solution isn't my idea, but I had to think a bit as to why it worked. Here's the code, explanation below:
def maximumSum(a, m):
prefixSums = [(0, -1)]
for idx, el in enumerate(a):
prefixSums.append(((prefixSums[-1][0] + el) % m, idx))
prefixSums = sorted(prefixSums)
maxSeen = prefixSums[-1][0]
for (a, a_idx), (b, b_idx) in zip(prefixSums[:-1], prefixSums[1:]):
if a_idx > b_idx and b > a:
maxSeen = max((a-b) % m, maxSeen)
return maxSeen
As with the other solutions, we first calculate the prefix sums, but this time we also keep track of the index of the prefix sum. We then sort the prefix sums, as we want to find the smallest difference between prefix sums modulo m - sorting lets us just look at adjacent elements as they have the smallest difference.
At this point you might think we're neglecting an essential part of the problem - we want the smallest difference between prefix sums, but the larger prefix sum needs to appear before the smaller prefix sum (meaning it has a smaller index). In the solutions using trees, we ensure that by adding prefix sums one by one and recalculating the best solution.
However, it turns out that we can look at adjacent elements and just ignore ones that don't satisfy our index requirement. This confused me for some time, but the key realization is that the optimal solution will always come from two adjacent elements. I'll prove this via a contradiction. Let's say that the optimal solution comes from two non-adjacent prefix sums x and z with indices i and k, where z > x (it's sorted!) and k > i:
x ... z
k ... i
Let's consider one of the numbers between x and z, and let's call it y with index j. Since the list is sorted, x < y < z.
x ... y ... z
k ... j ... i
The prefix sum y must have index j < i, otherwise it would be part of a better solution with z. But if j < i, then j < k and y and x form a better solution than z and x! So any elements between x and z must form a better solution with one of the two, which contradicts our original assumption. Therefore the optimal solution must come from adjacent prefix sums in the sorted list.
Here is Java code for maximum sub array sum modulo. We handle the case we can not find least element in the tree strictly greater than s[i]
public static long maxModulo(long[] a, final long k) {
long[] s = new long[a.length];
TreeSet<Long> tree = new TreeSet<>();
s[0] = a[0] % k;
tree.add(s[0]);
long result = s[0];
for (int i = 1; i < a.length; i++) {
s[i] = (s[i - 1] + a[i]) % k;
// find least element in the tree strictly greater than s[i]
Long v = tree.higher(s[i]);
if (v == null) {
// can't find v, then compare v and s[i]
result = Math.max(s[i], result);
} else {
result = Math.max((s[i] - v + k) % k, result);
}
tree.add(s[i]);
}
return result;
}
Few points from my side that might hopefully help someone understand the problem better.
You do not need to add +M to the modulo calculation, as mentioned, % operator handles negative numbers well, so a % M = (a + M) % M
As mentioned, the trick is to build the proxy sum table such that
proxy[n] = (a[1] + ... a[n]) % M
This then allows one to represent the maxSubarraySum[i, j] as
maxSubarraySum[i, j] = (proxy[j] - proxy[j]) % M
The implementation trick is to build the proxy table as we iterate through the elements, instead of first pre-building it and then using. This is because for each new element in the array a[i] we want to compute proxy[i] and find proxy[j] that is bigger than but as close as possible to proxy[i] (ideally bigger by 1 because this results in a reminder of M - 1). For this we need to use a clever data structure for building proxy table while keeping it sorted and
being able to quickly find a closest bigger element to proxy[i]. bisect.bisect_right is a good choice in Python.
See my Python implementation below (hope this helps but I am aware this might not necessarily be as concise as others' solutions):
def maximumSum(a, m):
prefix_sum = [a[0] % m]
prefix_sum_sorted = [a[0] % m]
current_max = prefix_sum_sorted[0]
for elem in a[1:]:
prefix_sum_next = (prefix_sum[-1] + elem) % m
prefix_sum.append(prefix_sum_next)
idx_closest_bigger = bisect.bisect_right(prefix_sum_sorted, prefix_sum_next)
if idx_closest_bigger >= len(prefix_sum_sorted):
current_max = max(current_max, prefix_sum_next)
bisect.insort_right(prefix_sum_sorted, prefix_sum_next)
continue
if prefix_sum_sorted[idx_closest_bigger] > prefix_sum_next:
current_max = max(current_max, (prefix_sum_next - prefix_sum_sorted[idx_closest_bigger]) % m)
bisect.insort_right(prefix_sum_sorted, prefix_sum_next)
return current_max
Total java implementation with O(n*log(n))
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.TreeSet;
import java.util.stream.Stream;
public class MaximizeSumMod {
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception{
BufferedReader in = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in));
Long times = Long.valueOf(in.readLine());
while(times --> 0){
long[] pair = Stream.of(in.readLine().split(" ")).mapToLong(Long::parseLong).toArray();
long mod = pair[1];
long[] numbers = Stream.of(in.readLine().split(" ")).mapToLong(Long::parseLong).toArray();
printMaxMod(numbers,mod);
}
}
private static void printMaxMod(long[] numbers, Long mod) {
Long maxSoFar = (numbers[numbers.length-1] + numbers[numbers.length-2])%mod;
maxSoFar = (maxSoFar > (numbers[0]%mod)) ? maxSoFar : numbers[0]%mod;
numbers[0] %=mod;
for (Long i = 1L; i < numbers.length; i++) {
long currentNumber = numbers[i.intValue()]%mod;
maxSoFar = maxSoFar > currentNumber ? maxSoFar : currentNumber;
numbers[i.intValue()] = (currentNumber + numbers[i.intValue()-1])%mod;
maxSoFar = maxSoFar > numbers[i.intValue()] ? maxSoFar : numbers[i.intValue()];
}
if(mod.equals(maxSoFar+1) || numbers.length == 2){
System.out.println(maxSoFar);
return;
}
long previousNumber = numbers[0];
TreeSet<Long> set = new TreeSet<>();
set.add(previousNumber);
for (Long i = 2L; i < numbers.length; i++) {
Long currentNumber = numbers[i.intValue()];
Long ceiling = set.ceiling(currentNumber);
if(ceiling == null){
set.add(numbers[i.intValue()-1]);
continue;
}
if(ceiling.equals(currentNumber)){
set.remove(ceiling);
Long greaterCeiling = set.ceiling(currentNumber);
if(greaterCeiling == null){
set.add(ceiling);
set.add(numbers[i.intValue()-1]);
continue;
}
set.add(ceiling);
ceiling = greaterCeiling;
}
Long newMax = (currentNumber - ceiling + mod);
maxSoFar = maxSoFar > newMax ? maxSoFar :newMax;
set.add(numbers[i.intValue()-1]);
}
System.out.println(maxSoFar);
}
}
Adding STL C++11 code based on the solution suggested by #Pham Trung. Might be handy.
#include <iostream>
#include <set>
int main() {
int N;
std::cin>>N;
for (int nn=0;nn<N;nn++){
long long n,m;
std::set<long long> mSet;
long long maxVal = 0; //positive input values
long long sumVal = 0;
std::cin>>n>>m;
mSet.insert(m);
for (long long q=0;q<n;q++){
long long tmp;
std::cin>>tmp;
sumVal = (sumVal + tmp)%m;
auto itSub = mSet.upper_bound(sumVal);
maxVal = std::max(maxVal,(m + sumVal - *itSub)%m);
mSet.insert(sumVal);
}
std::cout<<maxVal<<"\n";
}
}
As you can read in Wikipedia exists a solution called Kadane's algorithm, which compute the maximum subarray sum watching ate the maximum subarray ending at position i for all positions i by iterating once over the array. Then this solve the problem with with runtime complexity O(n).
Unfortunately, I think that Kadane's algorithm isn't able to find all possible solution when more than one solution exists.
An implementation in Java, I didn't tested it:
public int[] kadanesAlgorithm (int[] array) {
int start_old = 0;
int start = 0;
int end = 0;
int found_max = 0;
int max = array[0];
for(int i = 0; i<array.length; i++) {
max = Math.max(array[i], max + array[i]);
found_max = Math.max(found_max, max);
if(max < 0)
start = i+1;
else if(max == found_max) {
start_old=start;
end = i;
}
}
return Arrays.copyOfRange(array, start_old, end+1);
}
I feel my thoughts are aligned with what have been posted already, but just in case - Kotlin O(NlogN) solution:
val seen = sortedSetOf(0L)
var prev = 0L
return max(a.map { x ->
val z = (prev + x) % m
prev = z
seen.add(z)
seen.higher(z)?.let{ y ->
(z - y + m) % m
} ?: z
})
Implementation in java using treeset...
import java.io.BufferedReader;
import java.io.IOException;
import java.io.InputStreamReader;
import java.util.TreeSet;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args) throws IOException {
BufferedReader read = new BufferedReader(new InputStreamReader(System.in)) ;
String[] str = read.readLine().trim().split(" ") ;
int n = Integer.parseInt(str[0]) ;
long m = Long.parseLong(str[1]) ;
str = read.readLine().trim().split(" ") ;
long[] arr = new long[n] ;
for(int i=0; i<n; i++) {
arr[i] = Long.parseLong(str[i]) ;
}
long maxCount = 0L ;
TreeSet<Long> tree = new TreeSet<>() ;
tree.add(0L) ;
long prefix = 0L ;
for(int i=0; i<n; i++) {
prefix = (prefix + arr[i]) % m ;
maxCount = Math.max(prefix, maxCount) ;
Long temp = tree.higher(prefix) ;
System.out.println(temp);
if(temp != null) {
maxCount = Math.max((prefix-temp+m)%m, maxCount) ;
}
//System.out.println(maxCount);
tree.add(prefix) ;
}
System.out.println(maxCount);
}
}
Here is one implementation of solution in java for this problem which works using TreeSet in java for optimized solution !
public static long maximumSum2(long[] arr, long n, long m)
{
long x = 0;
long prefix = 0;
long maxim = 0;
TreeSet<Long> S = new TreeSet<Long>();
S.add((long)0);
// Traversing the array.
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
{
// Finding prefix sum.
prefix = (prefix + arr[i]) % m;
// Finding maximum of prefix sum.
maxim = Math.max(maxim, prefix);
// Finding iterator poing to the first
// element that is not less than value
// "prefix + 1", i.e., greater than or
// equal to this value.
long it = S.higher(prefix)!=null?S.higher(prefix):0;
// boolean isFound = false;
// for (long j : S)
// {
// if (j >= prefix + 1)
// if(isFound == false) {
// it = j;
// isFound = true;
// }
// else {
// if(j < it) {
// it = j;
// }
// }
// }
if (it != 0)
{
maxim = Math.max(maxim, prefix - it + m);
}
// adding prefix in the set.
S.add(prefix);
}
return maxim;
}
public static int MaxSequence(int[] arr)
{
int maxSum = 0;
int partialSum = 0;
int negative = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < arr.Length; i++)
{
if (arr[i] < 0)
{
negative++;
}
}
if (negative == arr.Length)
{
return 0;
}
foreach (int item in arr)
{
partialSum += item;
maxSum = Math.Max(maxSum, partialSum);
if (partialSum < 0)
{
partialSum = 0;
}
}
return maxSum;
}
Modify Kadane algorithm to keep track of #occurrence. Below is the code.
#python3
#source: https://github.com/harishvc/challenges/blob/master/dp-largest-sum-sublist-modulo.py
#Time complexity: O(n)
#Space complexity: O(n)
def maxContiguousSum(a,K):
sum_so_far =0
max_sum = 0
count = {} #keep track of occurrence
for i in range(0,len(a)):
sum_so_far += a[i]
sum_so_far = sum_so_far%K
if sum_so_far > 0:
max_sum = max(max_sum,sum_so_far)
if sum_so_far in count.keys():
count[sum_so_far] += 1
else:
count[sum_so_far] = 1
else:
assert sum_so_far < 0 , "Logic error"
#IMPORTANT: reset sum_so_far
sum_so_far = 0
return max_sum,count[max_sum]
a = [6, 6, 11, 15, 12, 1]
K = 13
max_sum,count = maxContiguousSum(a,K)
print("input >>> %s max sum=%d #occurrence=%d" % (a,max_sum,count))
I have been working on the following problem from this book.
A certain string-processing language offers a primitive operation which splits a string into two pieces. Since this operation involves copying the original string, it takes n units of time for a string of length n, regardless of the location of the cut. Suppose, now, that you want to break a string into many pieces. The order in which the breaks are made can affect the total running time. For example, if you want to cut a 20-character string at positions 3 and 10, then making the first cut at position 3 incurs a total cost of 20+17=37, while doing position 10 first has a better cost of 20+10=30.
I need a dynamic programming algorithm that given m cuts, finds the minimum cost of cutting a string into m+1 pieces.
The divide and conquer approach seems to me the best one for this kind of problem. Here is a Java implementation of the algorithm:
Note: the array m should be sorted in ascending order (use Arrays.sort(m);)
public int findMinCutCost(int[] m, int n) {
int cost = n * m.length;
for (int i=0; i<m.length; i++) {
cost = Math.min(findMinCutCostImpl(m, n, i), cost);
}
return cost;
}
private int findMinCutCostImpl(int[] m, int n, int i) {
if (m.length == 1) return n;
int cl = 0, cr = 0;
if (i > 0) {
cl = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
int[] ml = Arrays.copyOfRange(m, 0, i);
int nl = m[i];
for (int j=0; j<ml.length; j++) {
cl = Math.min(findMinCutCostImpl(ml, nl, j), cl);
}
}
if (i < m.length - 1) {
cr = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
int[] mr = Arrays.copyOfRange(m, i + 1, m.length);
int nr = n - m[i];
for (int j=0; j<mr.length; j++) {
mr[j] = mr[j] - m[i];
}
for (int j=0; j<mr.length; j++) {
cr = Math.min(findMinCutCostImpl(mr, nr, j), cr);
}
}
return n + cl + cr;
}
For example :
int n = 20;
int[] m = new int[] { 10, 3 };
System.out.println(findMinCutCost(m, n));
Will print 30
** Edit **
I have implemented two other methods to answer the problem in the question.
1. Median cut approximation
This method cut recursively always the biggest chunks. The results are not always the best solution, but offers a not negligible gain (in the order of +100000% gain from my tests) for a negligible minimal cut loss difference from the best cost.
public int findMinCutCost2(int[] m, int n) {
if (m.length == 0) return 0;
if (m.length == 1) return n;
float half = n/2f;
int bestIndex = 0;
for (int i=1; i<m.length; i++) {
if (Math.abs(half - m[bestIndex]) > Math.abs(half - m[i])) {
bestIndex = i;
}
}
int cl = 0, cr = 0;
if (bestIndex > 0) {
int[] ml = Arrays.copyOfRange(m, 0, bestIndex);
int nl = m[bestIndex];
cl = findMinCutCost2(ml, nl);
}
if (bestIndex < m.length - 1) {
int[] mr = Arrays.copyOfRange(m, bestIndex + 1, m.length);
int nr = n - m[bestIndex];
for (int j=0; j<mr.length; j++) {
mr[j] = mr[j] - m[bestIndex];
}
cr = findMinCutCost2(mr, nr);
}
return n + cl + cr;
}
2. A constant time multi-cut
Instead of calculating the minimal cost, just use different indices and buffers. Since this method executes in a constant time, it always returns n. Plus, the method actually split the string in substrings.
public int findMinCutCost3(int[] m, int n) {
char[][] charArr = new char[m.length+1][];
charArr[0] = new char[m[0]];
for (int i=0, j=0, k=0; j<n; j++) {
//charArr[i][k++] = string[j]; // string is the actual string to split
if (i < m.length && j == m[i]) {
if (++i >= m.length) {
charArr[i] = new char[n - m[i-1]];
} else {
charArr[i] = new char[m[i] - m[i-1]];
}
k=0;
}
}
return n;
}
Note: that this last method could easily be modified to accept a String str argument instead of n and set n = str.length(), and return a String[] array from charArr[][].
For dynamic programming, I claim that all you really need to know is what the state space should be - how to represent partial problems.
Here we are dividing a string up into m+1 pieces by creating new breaks. I claim that a good state space is a set of (a, b) pairs, where a is the location of the start of a substring and b is the location of the end of the same substring, counted as number of breaks in the final broken down string. The cost associated with each pair is the minimum cost of breaking it up. If b <= a + 1, then the cost is 0, because there are no more breaks to put in. If b is larger, then the possible locations for the next break in that substring are the points a+1, a+2,... b-1. The next break is going to cost b-a regardless of where we put it, but if we put it at position k the minimum cost of later breaks is (a, k) + (k, b).
So to solve this with dynamic programming, build up a table (a, b) of minimum costs, where you can work out the cost of breaks on strings with k sections by considering k - 1 possible breaks and then looking up the costs of strings with at most k - 1 sections.
One way to expand on this would be to start by creating a table T[a, b] and setting all entries in that table to infinity. Then go over the table again and where b <= a+1 put T[a,b] = 0. This fills in entries representing sections of the original string which need no further cuts. Now scan through the table and for each T[a,b] with b > a + 1 consider every possible k such that a < k < b and if min_k ((length between breaks a and b) + T[a,k] + T[k,b]) < T[a,b] set T[a,b] to that minimum value. This recognizes where you now know a way to chop up the substrings represented by T[a,k] and T[k,b] cheaply, so this gives you a better way to chop up T[a,b]. If you now repeat this m times you are done - use a standard dynamic programming backtrack to work out the solution. It might help if you save the best value of k for each T[a,b] in a separate table.
python code:
mincost(n, cut_list) =min { n+ mincost(k,left_cut_list) + min(n-k, right_cut_list) }
import sys
def splitstr(n,cut_list):
if len(cut_list) == 0:
return [0,[]]
min_positions = []
min_cost = sys.maxint
for k in cut_list:
left_split = [ x for x in cut_list if x < k]
right_split = [ x-k for x in cut_list if x > k]
#print n,k, left_split, right_split
lcost = splitstr(k,left_split)
rcost = splitstr(n-k,right_split)
cost = n+lcost[0] + rcost[0]
positions = [k] + lcost[1]+ [x+k for x in rcost[1]]
#print "cost:", cost, " min: ", positions
if cost < min_cost:
min_cost = cost
min_positions = positions
return ( min_cost, min_positions)
print splitstr(20,[3,10,16]) # (40, [10, 3, 16])
print splitstr(20,[3,10]) # (30, [10, 3])
print splitstr(5,[1,2,3,4,5]) # (13, [2, 1, 3, 4, 5])
print splitstr(1,[1]) # (1, [1]) # m cuts m+1 substrings
Here is a c++ implementation. Its an O(n^3) Implementation using D.P . Assuming that the cut array is sorted . If it is not it takes O(n^3) time to sort it hence asymptotic time complexity remains same.
#include <iostream>
#include <string.h>
#include <stdio.h>
#include <limits.h>
using namespace std;
int main(){
int i,j,gap,k,l,m,n;
while(scanf("%d%d",&n,&k)!=EOF){
int a[n+1][n+1];
int cut[k];
memset(a,0,sizeof(a));
for(i=0;i<k;i++)
cin >> cut[i];
for(gap=1;gap<=n;gap++){
for(i=0,j=i+gap;j<=n;j++,i++){
if(gap==1)
a[i][j]=0;
else{
int min = INT_MAX;
for(m=0;m<k;m++){
if(cut[m]<j and cut[m] >i){
int cost=(j-i)+a[i][cut[m]]+a[cut[m]][j];
if(cost<min)
min=cost;
}
}
if(min>=INT_MAX)
a[i][j]=0;
else
a[i][j]=min;
}
}
}
cout << a[0][n] << endl;
}
return 0;
}