Question

Microsoft | Bangalore | August | OA Coding Questions and Solutions | Set - 19| 2022

Answer 1

Car parking
Current state of car parking is stored in array current
-1 denotes a pillar,0-denotes a empty space,a positive integer denotes car number at spot.

 

Desired - array denoting ideal parking positioning of cars

 

1 move- car forward or backward to an empty space
Find minimum moves for car to reach desired positions.
Car cannot move or go through pillars.Car also cannot go over other cars.
Return -1 if desired cannot be achieved.

 

example
N-size of array
current=[-1,1,0,2]
desired=[-1,0,1,2]
output -1
move car 1 from position 1 to position 2

 

Sample-2

 

N- 4
current -0 1 2 0
desired- 1 2 0 0

 

output-2
move car 1 from position 2 to position 1.
[1 0 2 0]
move car 2 from position 2 to position 1.
[1 2 0 0]

 

Other test cases

 

N-7
current- [ 0 0 0 -1 7 -1 6 ]
desired -[ 0 0 0 -1 7 -1 6 ]

 

output=0

 

N-8
current- [ -1 7 5 -1 -1 -1 2 0 ]
desired -[ -1 7 5 -1 -1 -1 0 2]

 

output=1

 

N-8
current - [0 1 -1 5 8 6 0 2]
desired - [1 0 -1 5 8 0 2 6]

 

output= -1

 

function
def minimum_moves( N,current,desired )

Answer 2

cur=[-1,1,0,2]
des=[-1,0,1,2]

if Counter(cur)!=Counter(des):
    return -1

index, limit, res = {j:i for i,j in enumerate(cur)}, -1, 0      
for i,j in enumerate(des):
    if j==0:
        continue
    
    if j<0:
        if cur[i]!=-1 or limit>i:
            return -1
        limit=i
        continue
    
    if index[j]<limit:
        return -1
    res+=abs(index[j]-i)    
    limit=max(index[j],i)

 return res