problem description involving finding the minimum number of moves Jacob needs to travel between islands represented by characters in a string. The task is to implement a function MinMoves(…) that computes the minimum number of moves based on the input string.
To clarify and help you with the solution, here’s an outline of how to approach it:
Problem Breakdown
Input:
An integer N representing the size of the string.
A string S of size N, where each character represents an island.
An integer representing the minimum number of moves required to travel from the first island (index 0) to the last island (index N-1).
Sample Input:
9
ABCBDEEED
Sample Output:4
Explanation:
The goal is to find the optimal way for Jacob to move from the first character (island) to the last character with the minimum number of moves. Each move can be from one index to another, and the move counts increase as Jacob traverses different islands.
Steps to Solve:
Start from the first character of the string.
Iterate through the string and identify the minimum steps required to move from one character to the next distinct character until the end is reached. below is the code.
def MinMoves(N, S):
result = 0
i = 0
while i < N - 1:
j = i + 1
# Move to the next distinct island
while j < N and S[i] == S[j]:
j += 1
# Consider the move and update index
result += 1
i = j
return result
N = 9
S = "ABCBDEEED"
print(MinMoves(N, S))
Walkthrough:
Initial Position: current = 0 (‘A’).
Move 1: From ‘A’ to ‘B’ (new distinct character).
Move 2: From ‘B’ to the next ‘B’ (new distinct character).
Move 3: From ‘B’ to ‘D’ (new distinct character).
Move 4: From ‘D’ to the next ‘D’ (end of string or new distinct character).
Final output should be 4 but when I execute above code it is returned as 6 . Can someone help me out with proper code?