There is a stream of random characters coming like 'a''b''c''a'... and so on. At any given point in time when I query I need to get the first non repeating character. For example, for the input "abca", 'b' should be returned since a is repeated and the first non repeating character is 'b'.
There needs to be two methods, one for inserting and one for querying.
My solution is to have a linkedList to store the incoming stream characters. While I get the next character, I just compare with all the current characters and if present I will not insert into the end of linkedlist, else I will insert at the end. By this approach, the query will take O(1) since I will get the first element on the linkedlist and insert will take O(n) since I need to compare from the first element till the last element in the worst case.
Is there any better performing way?
Either you haven't explained your algorithm well or it won't return the correct result. In the example a b a, would your algorithm return a (because it is the first element in the linked list)?
Anyway, here is a modification that improves performance. The idea is to use a hash map from characters to (doubly) linked list nodes. This map can be used to determine if a character has already been inserted and to get to the required node quickly. We should allow a null value for the map target (instead of the list node) to express a character that has ocurred more than once already.
The insertion method works as follows:
Check if the map contains the current character (O(1)). If not, add it to the end of the list and add a reference to the map (O(1)).
If the character is already in the map: Check if the pointed to node is null (O(1)). If so, just ignore it. If it is not, remove the pointed to node from the list and update the reference to a null value (O(1)).
Overall, a O(1) operation.
The query works as in your previous solution.
Here is a C# implementation. It's basically a 1:1 translation of the above explanation:
class StreamAnalyzer
{
LinkedList<char> characterList = new LinkedList<char>();
Dictionary<char, LinkedListNode<char>> characterMap
= new Dictionary<char, LinkedListNode<char>>();
public void AddCharacter(char c)
{
LinkedListNode<char> referencedNode;
if (characterMap.TryGetValue(c, out referencedNode))
{
if(referencedNode != null)
{
characterList.Remove(referencedNode);
characterMap[c] = null;
}
}
else
{
var node = new LinkedListNode<char>(c);
characterList.AddLast(node);
characterMap.Add(c, node);
}
}
public char? GetFirstNonRepeatingCharacter()
{
if (characterList.First == null)
return null;
else
return characterList.First.Value;
}
}
Related
In a recent amazon interview I was asked to implement Google "suggestion" feature. When a user enters "Aeniffer Aninston", Google suggests "Did you mean Jeniffer Aninston". I tried to solve it by using hashing but could not cover the corner cases. Please let me know your thought on this.
There are 4 most common types of erros -
Omitted letter: "stck" instead of "stack"
One letter typo: "styck" instead of "stack"
Extra letter: "starck" instead of "stack"
Adjacent letters swapped: "satck" instead of "stack"
BTW, we can swap not adjacent letters but any letters but this is not common typo.
Initial state - typed word. Run BFS/DFS from initial vertex. Depth of search is your own choice. Remember that increasing depth of search leads to dramatically increasing number of "probable corrections". I think depth ~ 4-5 is a good start.
After generating "probable corrections" search each generated word-candidate in a dictionary - binary search in sorted dictionary or search in a trie which populated with your dictionary.
Trie is faster but binary search allows searching in Random Access File without loading dictionary to RAM. You have to load only precomputed integer array[]. Array[i] gives you number of bytes to skip for accesing i-th word. Words in Random Acces File should be written in a sorted order. If you have enough RAM to store dictionary use trie.
Before suggesting corrections check typed word - if it is in a dictionary, provide nothing.
UPDATE
Generate corrections should be done by BFS - when I tried DFS, entries like "Jeniffer" showed "edit distance = 3". DFS doesn't works, since it make a lot of changes which can be done in one step - for example, Jniffer->nJiffer->enJiffer->eJniffer->Jeniffer instead of Jniffer->Jeniffer.
Sample code for generating corrections by BFS
static class Pair
{
private String word;
private byte dist;
// dist is byte because dist<=128.
// Moreover, dist<=6 in real application
public Pair(String word,byte dist)
{
this.word = word;
this.dist = dist;
}
public String getWord()
{
return word;
}
public int getDist()
{
return dist;
}
}
public static void main(String[] args) throws Exception
{
HashSet<String> usedWords;
HashSet<String> dict;
ArrayList<String> corrections;
ArrayDeque<Pair> states;
usedWords = new HashSet<String>();
corrections = new ArrayList<String>();
dict = new HashSet<String>();
states = new ArrayDeque<Pair>();
// populate dictionary. In real usage should be populated from prepared file.
dict.add("Jeniffer");
dict.add("Jeniffert"); //depth 2 test
usedWords.add("Jniffer");
states.add(new Pair("Jniffer", (byte)0));
while(!states.isEmpty())
{
Pair head = states.pollFirst();
//System.out.println(head.getWord()+" "+head.getDist());
if(head.getDist()<=2)
{
// checking reached depth.
//4 is the first depth where we don't generate anything
// swap adjacent letters
for(int i=0;i<head.getWord().length()-1;i++)
{
// swap i-th and i+1-th letters
String newWord = head.getWord().substring(0,i)+head.getWord().charAt(i+1)+head.getWord().charAt(i)+head.getWord().substring(i+2);
// even if i==curWord.length()-2 and then i+2==curWord.length
//substring(i+2) doesn't throw exception and returns empty string
// the same for substring(0,i) when i==0
if(!usedWords.contains(newWord))
{
usedWords.add(newWord);
if(dict.contains(newWord))
{
corrections.add(newWord);
}
states.addLast(new Pair(newWord, (byte)(head.getDist()+1)));
}
}
// insert letters
for(int i=0;i<=head.getWord().length();i++)
for(char ch='a';ch<='z';ch++)
{
String newWord = head.getWord().substring(0,i)+ch+head.getWord().substring(i);
if(!usedWords.contains(newWord))
{
usedWords.add(newWord);
if(dict.contains(newWord))
{
corrections.add(newWord);
}
states.addLast(new Pair(newWord, (byte)(head.getDist()+1)));
}
}
}
}
for(String correction:corrections)
{
System.out.println("Did you mean "+correction+"?");
}
usedWords.clear();
corrections.clear();
// helper data structures must be cleared after each generateCorrections call - must be empty for the future usage.
}
Words in a dictionary - Jeniffer,Jeniffert. Jeniffert is just for testing)
Output:
Did you mean Jeniffer?
Did you mean Jeniffert?
Important!
I choose depth of generating = 2. In real application depth should be 4-6, but as number of combinations grows exponentially, I don't go so deep. There are some optomizations devoted to reduce number of branches in a searching tree but I don't think much about them. I wrote only main idea.
Also, I used HashSet for storing dictionary and for labeling used words. It seems HashSet's constant is too large when it containt million objects. May be you should use trie both for word in a dictionary checking and for is word labeled checking.
I didn't implement erase letters and change letters operations because I want to show only main idea.
“Find a recurring element in a linked list of unicode characters. If a unicode character/s is found to have a duplicate then just delete that repeating node and adjust the list. The constraint was to not to use any extra memory.”
My answer:
Assuming that the unicode char doesn't include surrogate pair char As I am using c#
I don't know how can you find a duplicate character unless you know the values of the previous nodes while traversing the list, and to maintain the previous values you will need extra memory (hash table).
Guys, can you think of any solution to this question? It's an interview question on one of the sites. Also is it possible to solve this in O(n) time?
Here is my Implementation. Can You give feedback on it so that I can make it better?
public static void RemoveDup(Node head)
{
Node current1 = head;
Node current2;
while (current1 != null)
{
current2 = current1;
while (current2 != null)
{
if (current2.Next!=null && current1.Data == current2.Next.Data)
{
Node temp = current2.Next.Next;
current2.Next = temp;
current2=current1;
continue;
}
current2 = current2.Next;
if (current2 == null)
break;
}
current1 = current1.Next;
if (current1 == null)
break;
}
}
For each element in the list, search the list for that element and delete it starting at that element's position until you're out of elements.
I'll leave implementation and other choices to you.
The only way I can see to do this without saving previously-seen values somehow would be to use nested loops. Outer loop is "traverse the whole list", inner loop is "traverse the whole list and delete copies of the item pointed at by the outer loop".
Sort the list - then all duplicates will be in a row. That will take O(nlogn) time. Of course that assumes that you can sort the list (maybe the order is important?) and that you can sort it inplace (no extra memory).
What is the algorithm - seemingly in use on domain parking pages - that takes a spaceless bunch of words (eg "thecarrotofcuriosity") and more-or-less correctly breaks it down into the constituent words (eg "the carrot of curiosity") ?
Start with a basic Trie data structure representing your dictionary. As you iterate through the characters of the the string, search your way through the trie with a set of pointers rather than a single pointer - the set is seeded with the root of the trie. For each letter, the whole set is advanced at once via the pointer indicated by the letter, and if a set element cannot be advanced by the letter, it is removed from the set. Whenever you reach a possible end-of-word, add a new root-of-trie to the set (keeping track of the list of words seen associated with that set element). Finally, once all characters have been processed, return an arbitrary list of words which is at the root-of-trie. If there's more than one, that means the string could be broken up in multiple ways (such as "therapistforum" which can be parsed as ["therapist", "forum"] or ["the", "rapist", "forum"]) and it's undefined which we'll return.
Or, in a wacked up pseudocode (Java foreach, tuple indicated with parens, set indicated with braces, cons using head :: tail, [] is the empty list):
List<String> breakUp(String str, Trie root) {
Set<(List<String>, Trie)> set = {([], root)};
for (char c : str) {
Set<(List<String>, Trie)> newSet = {};
for (List<String> ls, Trie t : set) {
Trie tNext = t.follow(c);
if (tNext != null) {
newSet.add((ls, tNext));
if (tNext.isWord()) {
newSet.add((t.follow(c).getWord() :: ls, root));
}
}
}
set = newSet;
}
for (List<String> ls, Trie t : set) {
if (t == root) return ls;
}
return null;
}
Let me know if I need to clarify or I missed something...
I would imagine they take a dictionary word list like /usr/share/dict/words on your common or garden variety Unix system and try to find sets of word matches (starting from the left?) that result in the largest amount of original text being covered by a match. A simple breadth-first-search implementation would probably work fine, since it obviously doesn't have to run fast.
I'd imaging these sites do it similar to this:
Get a list of word for your target language
Remove "useless" words like "a", "the", ...
Run through the list and check which of the words are substrings of the domain name
Take the most common words of the remaining list (Or the ones with the highest adsense rating,...)
Of course that leads to nonsense for expertsexchange, but what else would you expect there...
(disclaimer: I did not try it myself, so take it merely as a food for experimentation. 4-grams are taken mostly out of the blue sky, just from my experience that 3-grams won't work all too well; 5-grams and more might work better, even though you will have to deal with a pretty large table). It's also simplistic in a sense that it does not take into the account the ending of the string - if it works for you otherwise, you'd probably need to think about fixing the endings.
This algorithm would run in a predictable time proportional to the length of the string that you are trying to split.
So, first: Take a lot of human-readable texts. for each of the text, supposing it is in a single string str, run the following algorithm (pseudocode-ish notation, assumes the [] is a hashtable-like indexing, and that nonexistent indexes return '0'):
for(i=0;i<length(s)-5;i++) {
// take 4-character substring starting at position i
subs2 = substring(str, i, 4);
if(has_space(subs2)) {
subs = substring(str, i, 5);
delete_space(subs);
yes_space[subs][position(space, subs2)]++;
} else {
subs = subs2;
no_space[subs]++;
}
}
This will build you the tables which will help to decide whether a given 4-gram would need to have a space in it inserted or not.
Then, take your string to split, I denote it as xstr, and do:
for(i=0;i<length(xstr)-5;i++) {
subs = substring(xstr, i, 4);
for(j=0;j<4;j++) {
do_insert_space_here[i+j] -= no_space[subs];
}
for(j=0;j<4;j++) {
do_insert_space_here[i+j] += yes_space[subs][j];
}
}
Then you can walk the "do_insert_space_here[]" array - if an element at a given position is bigger than 0, then you should insert a space in that position in the original string. If it's less than zero, then you shouldn't.
Please drop a note here if you try it (or something of this sort) and it works (or does not work) for you :-)
I am searching for an efficient a technique to find a sequence of Op occurences in a Seq[Op]. Once an occurence is found, I want to replace the occurence with a defined replacement and run the same search again until the list stops changing.
Scenario:
I have three types of Op case classes. Pop() extends Op, Push() extends Op and Nop() extends Op. I want to replace the occurence of Push(), Pop() with Nop(). Basically the code could look like seq.replace(Push() ~ Pop() ~> Nop()).
Problem:
Now that I call seq.replace(...) I will have to search in the sequence for an occurence of Push(), Pop(). So far so good. I find the occurence. But now I will have to splice the occurence form the list and insert the replacement.
Now there are two options. My list could be mutable or immutable. If I use an immutable list I am scared regarding performance because those sequences are usually 500+ elements in size. If I replace a lot of occurences like A ~ B ~ C ~> D ~ E I will create a lot of new objects If I am not mistaken. However I could also use a mutable sequence like ListBuffer[Op].
Basically from a linked-list background I would just do some pointer-bending and after a total of four operations I am done with the replacement without creating new objects. That is why I am now concerned about performance. Especially since this is a performance-critical operation for me.
Question:
How would you implement the replace() method in a Scala fashion and what kind of data structure would you use keeping in mind that this is a performance-critical operation?
I am happy with answers that point me in the right direction or pseudo code. No need to write a full replace method.
Thank you.
Ok, some considerations to be made. First, recall that, on lists, tail does not create objects, and prepending (::) only creates one object for each prepended element. That's pretty much as good as you can get, generally speaking.
One way of doing this would be this:
def myReplace(input: List[Op], pattern: List[Op], replacement: List[Op]) = {
// This function should be part of an KMP algorithm instead, for performance
def compare(pattern: List[Op], list: List[Op]): Boolean = (pattern, list) match {
case (x :: xs, y :: ys) if x == y => compare(xs, ys)
case (Nil, Nil) => true
case _ => false
}
var processed: List[Op] = Nil
var unprocessed: List[Op] = input
val patternLength = pattern.length
val reversedReplacement = replacement.reverse
// Do this until we finish processing the whole sequence
while (unprocessed.nonEmpty) {
// This inside algorithm would be better if replaced by KMP
// Quickly process non-matching sequences
while (unprocessed.nonEmpty && unprocessed.head != pattern.head) {
processed ::= unprocessed.head
unprocessed = unprocessed.tail
}
if (unprocessed.nonEmpty) {
if (compare(pattern, unprocessed)) {
processed :::= reversedReplacement
unprocessed = unprocessed drop patternLength
} else {
processed ::= unprocessed.head
unprocessed = unprocessed.tail
}
}
}
processed.reverse
}
You may gain speed by using KMP, particularly if the pattern searched for is long.
Now, what is the problem with this algorithm? The problem is that it won't test if the replaced pattern causes a match before that position. For instance, if I replace ACB with C, and I have an input AACBB, then the result of this algorithm will be ACB instead of C.
To avoid this problem, you should create a backtrack. First, you check at which position in your pattern the replacement may happen:
val positionOfReplacement = pattern.indexOfSlice(replacement)
Then, you modify the replacement part of the algorithm this:
if (compare(pattern, unprocessed)) {
if (positionOfReplacement > 0) {
unprocessed :::= replacement
unprocessed :::= processed take positionOfReplacement
processed = processed drop positionOfReplacement
} else {
processed :::= reversedReplacement
unprocessed = unprocessed drop patternLength
}
} else {
This will backtrack enough to solve the problem.
This algorithm won't deal efficiently, however, with multiply patterns at the same time, which I guess is where you are going. For that, you'll probably need some adaptation of KMP, to do it efficiently, or, otherwise, use a DFA to control possible matchings. It gets even worse if you want to match both AB and ABC.
In practice, the full blow problem is equivalent to regex match & replace, where the replace is a function of the match. Which means, of course, you may want to start looking into regex algorithms.
EDIT
I was forgetting to complete my reasoning. If that technique doesn't work for some reason, then my advice is going with an immutable tree-based vector. Tree-based vectors enable replacement of partial sequences with low amount of copying.
And if that doesn't do, then the solution is doubly linked lists. And pick one from a library with slice replacement -- otherwise you may end up spending way too much time debugging a known but tricky algorithm.
I am developing a Trie data-structure where each node represents a word. So words st, stack, stackoverflow and overflow will be arranged as
root
--st
---stack
-----stackoverflow
--overflow
My Trie uses a HashTable internally so all node lookup will take constant time. Following is the algorithm I came up to insert an item into the trie.
Check item existence in the trie. If exist, return, else goto step2.
Iterate each character in the key and check for the existence of the word. Do this until we get a node where the new value can be added as child. If no node found, it will be added under root node.
After insertion, rearrange the siblings of the node under which the new node was inserted. This will walk through all the siblings and compare against the newly inserted node. If any of the node starts with same characters that new node have, it will be moved from there and added as child of new node.
I am not sure that this is the correct way of implementing a trie. Any suggestions or improvements are welcome.
Language used : C++
The trie should look like this
ROOT
overflow/ \st
O O
\ack
O
\overflow
O
Normally you don't need to use hash tables as part of a trie; the trie itself is already an efficient index data structure. Of course you can do that.
But anyway, your step (2) should actually descend the trie during the search and not just query the hash function. In this way you find the insertion point readily and don't need to search for it later as a separate step.
I believe step (3) is wrong, you don't need to rearrange a trie and as a matter of fact you shouldn't be able to because it's only the additional string fragments that you store in the trie; see the picture above.
Following is the java code for insert algorithm.
public void insert(String s){
Node current = root;
if(s.length()==0) //For an empty character
current.marker=true;
for(int i=0;i<s.length();i++){
Node child = current.subNode(s.charAt(i));
if(child!=null){
current = child;
}
else{
current.child.add(new Node(s.charAt(i)));
current = current.subNode(s.charAt(i));
}
// Set marker to indicate end of the word
if(i==s.length()-1)
current.marker = true;
}
}
For a more detailed tutorial, refer here.