RKABOL02 - Editorial

editorial
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PROBLEM LINK:

Practice

Contest

Author: ravikiran0606

Editorialist: ravikiran0606

DIFFICULTY:

EASY-MEDIUM

PREREQUISITES:

RECURSION, BACK-TRACKING

PROBLEM:

Given an integer N and a string S of length N. We need to generate a number with N+1 digits such that the following contraints holds true,

  1. If the (i)'th character of the string is I, then (i)'th digit in the number > (i+1)'th digit in that number.

  2. If the (i)'th character of the string is D, then (i)'th digit in the number < (i+1)'th digit in that number…

  3. All the digits of the number are distinct and non-zero.

EXPLANATION:

In this question, its very easy to find one of the cases for -1 that for all N>=9, the answer is always -1 since there are only 9 non-zero distinct digits from 1 to 9. Thus we can find solution only if N<=8. If the length of the string is N, we need to generate a number with N+1 digits with the given contraint. We can solve this using recursion and backtracking by trying all possible combinations of digits of length N+1 with the given constraint and print the lexicographically smallest one. If no solution exists we can print -1. The expected complexity is O(9n).

AUTHOR’S SOLUTION:

Author’s solution can be found here