Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.
station_layout
representing the layout of observation points, and a string observations
representing the order of required observations.Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.
General Idea: Map each letter in station_layout
to its index, then calculate the total time to move from one observation point to another based on observations
.
1) Create a dictionary `layout_index` to map each letter in `station_layout` to its index.
2) Initialize `current_index` to 0 and `total_time` to 0.
3) Iterate through `observations`:
- For each character, find its index in `station_layout`.
- Calculate the time to move to the new index and add it to `total_time`.
- Update `current_index` to the new index.
4) Return `total_time`.
⚠️ Common Mistakes
def navigate_research_station(station_layout, observations):
# Create a dictionary to map each letter to its index in the station layout
layout_index = {}
for idx, char in enumerate(station_layout):
layout_index[char] = idx
# Initialize the starting index (initially at 0)
current_index = 0
total_time = 0
# Iterate through each character in the observations string
for char in observations:
# Find the index of the current character in the station layout
target_index = layout_index[char]
# Calculate the time taken to move to the target index
total_time += abs(current_index - target_index)
# Update the current index to the target index
current_index = target_index
return total_time