Develop Reference

Calculating the correct length of string per line with Page X/Y

I got asked a question and now I am kicking myself for not being able to come up with the exact/correct result.
Imagine we have a function that splits a string into multiple lines but each line has to have x number of characters before we "split" to the new line:
private string[] GetPagedMessages(string input, int maxCharsPerLine) { ... }
For each line, we need to incorporate, at the end of the line "x/y" which is basically 1/4, 2/4 etc...
Now, the paging mechanism must also be part of the length restriction per line.
I have been overworked and overthinking and tripping up on things and this seems pretty straight forward but for the life of me, I cannot figure it out! What am I not "getting"?
What am I interested in? The calculation and some part of the logic but mainly the calculation of how many lines are required to split the input based on the max chars per line which also needs to include the x/y.
Remember: we can have more than a single digit for the x/y (i.e: not just 1/4 but also 10/17 or 99/200)
Samples:
input = "This is a long message"
maxCharsPerLine = 10
output:
This i 1/4 // << Max 10 chars
s a lo 2/4 // << Max 10 chars
ng mes 3/4 // << Max 10 chars
sage 4/4 // << Max 10 chars
Overall the logic is simple but its just the calculation that is throwing me off.

The idea: First, find how many digits is the number of lines:
(n = input.Length, maxCharsPerLine = 10)
if n <= 9*(10-4) ==> 1 digit
if n <= 9*(10-5) + 90*(10-6) ==> 2 digits
if n <= 9*(10-6) + 90*(10-7) + 900*(10-8) ==> 3 digits
if n <= 9*(10-7) + 90*(10-8) + 900*(10-9) + 9000*(10-10) ==> No solution
Then, subtract the spare number of lines. The solution:
private static int GetNumberOfLines(string input, int maxCharsPerLine)
{
int n = input.Length;
int x = maxCharsPerLine;
for (int i = 4; i < x; i++)
{
int j, sum = 0, d = 9, numberOfLines = 0;
for (j = i; j <= i + i - 4; j++)
{
if (x - j <= 0)
return -1; // No solution
sum += d * (x - j);
numberOfLines += d;
d *= 10;
}
if (n <= sum)
return numberOfLines - (sum - n) / (x - j + 1);
}
return -2; // Invalid
}
Usage:
private static string[] GetPagedMessages(string input, int maxCharsPerLine)
{
int numberOfLines = GetNumberOfLines(input, maxCharsPerLine);
if (numberOfLines < 0)
return null;
string[] result = new string[numberOfLines];
int spaceLeftForLine = maxCharsPerLine - numberOfLines.ToString().Length - 2; // Remove the chars of " x/y" except the incremental 'x'
int inputPosition = 0;
for (int line = 1; line < numberOfLines; line++)
{
int charsInLine = spaceLeftForLine - line.ToString().Length;
result[line - 1] = input.Substring(inputPosition, charsInLine) + $" {line}/{numberOfLines}";
inputPosition += charsInLine;
}
result[numberOfLines-1] = input.Substring(inputPosition) + $" {numberOfLines}/{numberOfLines}";
return result;
}

A naive approach is to start counting the line lengths minus the "pager"'s size, until the line count changes in size ("1/9" is shorter than "1/10", which is shorter than "11/20", and so on):
private static int[] GetLineLengths(string input, int maxCharsPerLine)
{
/* The "pager" (x/y) is at least 4 characters (including the preceding space) and at most ... 8?
* 7/9 (4)
* 1/10 (5)
* 42/69 (6)
* 3/123 (6)
* 42/420 (7)
* 999/999 (8)
*/
int charsRemaining = input.Length;
var lineLengths = new List<int>();
// Start with " 1/2", (1 + 1 + 2) = 4 length
var highestLineNumberLength = 1;
var lineNumber = 0;
do
{
lineNumber++;
var currentLineNumberLength = lineNumber.ToString().Length; // 1 = 1, 99 = 2, ...
if (currentLineNumberLength > highestLineNumberLength)
{
// Pager size changed, reset
highestLineNumberLength = currentLineNumberLength;
lineLengths.Clear();
lineNumber = 0;
charsRemaining = input.Length;
continue;
}
var pagerSize = currentLineNumberLength + highestLineNumberLength + 2;
var lineLength = maxCharsPerLine - pagerSize;
if (lineLength <= 0)
{
throw new ArgumentException($"Can't split input of size {input.Length} into chunks of size {maxCharsPerLine}");
}
lineLengths.Add(lineLength);
charsRemaining -= lineLength;
}
while (charsRemaining > 0);
return lineLengths.ToArray();
}
Usage:
private static string[] GetPagedMessages(string input, int maxCharsPerLine)
{
if (input.Length <= maxCharsPerLine)
{
// Assumption: no pager required for a message that takes one line
return new[] { input };
}
var lineLengths = GetLineLengths(input, maxCharsPerLine);
var result = new string[lineLengths.Length];
// Cut the input and append the pager
var previousIndex = 0;
for (var i = 0; i < lineLengths.Length; i++)
{
var lineLength = Math.Min(lineLengths[i], input.Length - previousIndex); // To cater for final line being shorter
result[i] = input.Substring(previousIndex, lineLength) + " " + (i + 1) + "/" + lineLengths.Length;
previousIndex += lineLength;
}
return result;
}
Prints, for example:
This 1/20
is a 2/20
long 3/20
strin 4/20
g tha 5/20
t wil 6/20
l spa 7/20
n mor 8/20
e tha 9/20
n te 10/20
n li 11/20
nes 12/20
beca 13/20
use 14/20
of i 15/20
ts e 16/20
norm 17/20
ous 18/20
leng 19/20
th 20/20

How to split characters of string equally between buttons?

I have an array of string elements of various words. I need the characters of each word be split equally into the text component of 3 buttons. For example, the array could hold the elements "maybe", "his", "car". In each game one of these words will be pulled from the array and its characters divided into the 3 buttons. For example, button 1 will have "ma", button 2 will have "yb" and button 3 "e" (for the word maybe). I then hide the text element of one button for the user to drag and drop the correct missing letter(s) into the space. The purpose of the game is to help children learn to spell. Does anyone know how I could go about dividing the characters equally into the 3 buttons?

Here's a function that would split the word into the amount of segments you want. You can then iterate over that list to set each segment to a button.Text.
public List<string> SplitInSegments(string word, int segments)
{
int wordLength = word.Length;
// The remainder tells us how many segments will get an extra letter
int remainder = wordLength % segments;
// The base length of a segment
// This is a floor division, because we're dividing ints.
// So 5 / 3 = 1
int segmentLength = wordLength / segments;
var result = new List<string>();
int startIndex = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < segments; i++)
{
// This segment may get an extra letter, if its index is smaller then the remainder
int currentSegmentLength = segmentLength + (i < remainder ? 1 : 0);
string currentSegment = word.Substring(startIndex, currentSegmentLength);
// Set the startindex for the next segment.
startIndex += currentSegmentLength;
result.Add(currentSegment);
}
return result;
}
usage:
// returns ["ma", "yb", "e"]
var segments = SplitInSegments("maybe", 3);
Edit
I like the fact that this is for teaching children. So here comes.
Regarding your question on splitting the string based on specific letter sequences: After you've split the string using regex, you will have an array of strings. Then determine the amount of items in the splitted string and concatenate or split further based on the number of segments:
// sequences to split on first
static readonly string[] splitSequences = {
"el",
"ol",
"bo"
};
static readonly string regexDelimiters = string.Join('|', splitSequences.Select(s => "(" + s + ")"));
// Method to split on sequences
public static List<string> SplitOnSequences(string word)
{
return Regex.Split(word, regexDelimiters).Where(s => !string.IsNullOrEmpty(s)).ToList();
}
public static List<string> SplitInSegments(string word, int segments)
{
int wordLength = word.Length;
// The remainder tells us how many segments will get an extra letter
int remainder = wordLength % segments;
// The base length of a segment
// This is a floor division, because we're dividing ints.
// So 5 / 3 = 1
int segmentLength = wordLength / segments;
var result = new List<string>();
int startIndex = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < segments; i++)
{
// This segment may get an extra letter, if its index is smaller then the remainder
int currentSegmentLength = segmentLength + (i < remainder ? 1 : 0);
string currentSegment = word.Substring(startIndex, currentSegmentLength);
// Set the startindex for the next segment.
startIndex += currentSegmentLength;
result.Add(currentSegment);
}
return result;
}
// Splitword will now always return 3 segments
public static List<string> SplitWord(string word)
{
if (word == null)
{
throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(word));
}
if (word.Length < 3)
{
throw new ArgumentException("Word must be at least 3 characters long", nameof(word));
}
var splitted = SplitOnSequences(word);
var result = new List<string>();
if (splitted.Count == 1)
{
// If the result is not splitted, just split it evenly.
result = SplitInSegments(word, 3);
}
else if (splitted.Count == 2)
{
// If we've got 2 segments, split the shortest segment again.
if (splitted[1].Length > splitted[0].Length
&& !splitSequences.Contains(splitted[1]))
{
result.Add(splitted[0]);
result.AddRange(SplitInSegments(splitted[1], 2));
}
else
{
result.AddRange(SplitInSegments(splitted[0], 2));
result.Add(splitted[1]);
}
}
else // splitted.Count >= 3
{
// 3 segments is good.
result = splitted;
// More than 3 segments, combine some together.
while (result.Count > 3)
{
// Find the shortest combination of two segments
int shortestComboCount = int.MaxValue;
int shortestComboIndex = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < result.Count - 1; i++)
{
int currentComboCount = result[i].Length + result[i + 1].Length;
if (currentComboCount < shortestComboCount)
{
shortestComboCount = currentComboCount;
shortestComboIndex = i;
}
}
// Combine the shortest segments and replace in the result.
string combo = result[shortestComboIndex] + result[shortestComboIndex + 1];
result.RemoveAt(shortestComboIndex + 1);
result[shortestComboIndex] = combo;
}
}
return result;
}
Now when you call the code:
// always returns three segments.
var splitted = SplitWord(word);

Here is another approach.
First make sure that the word can be divided by the desired segments (add a dummy space if necessary) , then use a Linq statement to get your parts and when adding the result trim away the dummy characters.
public static string[] SplitInSegments(string word, int segments)
{
while(word.Length % segments != 0) { word+=" ";}
var result = new List<string>();
for(int x=0; x < word.Count(); x += word.Length / segments)
result.Add((new string(word.Skip(x).Take(word.Length / segments).ToArray()).Trim()));
return result.ToArray();
}

You can split your string into a list and generate buttons based on your list. The logic for splitting the word into a string list would be something similar to this:
string test = "maybe";
List list = new List();
int i = 0, len = 2;
while(i <= test.Length)
{
int lastIndex = test.Length - 1;
list.Add(test.Substring(i, i + len > lastIndex? (i + len) - test.Length : len));
i += len;
}
HTH

Calculate 2^(n) where 0<n<10000

So, this is my problem to solve:
I want to calculate 2^(n) where 0 < n< 10000
I am representing each element of array as a space where 4digit number should be "living" and if extra digit appears, I am replacing it to the next element of this array.
The principle I am using looks like this:
The code I am using is the following:
static string NotEfficient(int power)
{
if (power < 0)
throw new Exception("Power shouldn't be negative");
if (power == 0)
return "1";
if (power == 1)
return "2";
int[] A = new int[3750];
int current4Digit = 0;
//at first 2 is written in first element of array
A[current4Digit] = 2;
int currentPower = 1;
while (currentPower < power)
{
//multiply every 4digit by 2
for (int i = 0; i <= current4Digit; i++)
{
A[i] *= 2;
}
currentPower++;
//checking every 4digit if it
//contains 5 digit and if yes remove and
//put it in next 4digit
for (int i = 0; i <= current4Digit; i++)
{
if (A[i] / 10000 > 0)
{
int more = A[i] / 10000;
A[i] = A[i] % 10000;
A[i + 1] += more;
//if new digit should be opened
if (i + 1 > current4Digit)
{
current4Digit++;
}
}
}
}
//getting data from array to generate answer
string answer = "";
for (int i = current4Digit; i >= 0; i--)
{
answer += A[i].ToString() + ",";
}
return answer;
}
The problem I have is that it doesn't display correctly the number, which contains 0 in reality. for example 2 ^ (50) = 1 125 899 906 842 624 and with my algorithm I get 1 125 899 96 842 624 (0 is missing). This isn't only for 50...
This happens when I have the following situation for example:
How I can make this algorithm better?

Use BigInteger, which is already included in .Net Core or available in the System.Runtime.Numerics Nuget Package.
static string Efficient(int power)
{
var result = BigInteger.Pow(2, power);
return result.ToString(CultureInfo.InvariantCulture);
}
On my machine, NotEfficient takes roughly 80ms, where Efficient takes 0.3ms. You should be able to manipulate that string (if I'm understanding your problem statement correctly):
static string InsertCommas(string value)
{
var sb = new StringBuilder(value);
for (var i = value.Length - 4; i > 0; i -= 4)
{
sb.Insert(i, ',');
}
return sb.ToString();
}

One way to resolve this is to pad your 4-digit numbers with leading zeroes if they are less than four digits by using the PadLeft method:
answer += A[i].ToString().PadLeft(4, '0') + ",";
And then you can use the TrimStart method to remove any leading zeros from the final result:
return answer.TrimStart('0');

Sum of two really big numbers

My task is to add a very big number to another and print the result.
Here is my implementation, it should give 1000 as output but it writes 0000.
How it should work:
if the two number has equal length:
just /10 for the digit %10 for the remainder. If the length of the result is bigger than the original add the last remainder to the last element of the output array.
if the two number has different length:
sum the intersection part and add the remainder (in temp) to the relative complementl.
What is wrong?
static int[] SumOfBigNumbers(int[] firstNumber, int[] secondNumber)
{
int temp = 0;
int maxLength = (Math.Max(firstNumber.Length, secondNumber.Length));
int minLength = (Math.Min(firstNumber.Length, secondNumber.Length));
int[] output = new int[maxLength + 1];
//sum of equal part
for (int counter = 0; counter < minLength; counter++)
{
output[counter] = (firstNumber[counter] + secondNumber[counter] + temp) % 10;
temp = (firstNumber[counter] + secondNumber[counter] + temp) / 10;
}
//exceptions add the temp to the bigger array
if (temp!=0)
{
//if first array is bigger than the second
if (firstNumber.Length > secondNumber.Length)
{
for (int i = minLength; i < maxLength + 1; i++)
{
output[i] = (firstNumber[i] + temp) % 10;
temp = (firstNumber[i] + temp) / 10;
}
}
//if second array is bigger than the first
else if (firstNumber.Length < secondNumber.Length)
{
for (int i = minLength; i < maxLength + 1; i++)
{
output[i] = (secondNumber[i] + temp) % 10;
temp = (secondNumber[i] + temp) / 10;
}
}
//if two number has equal length but there is temp left
else
{
output[maxLength] = temp;
}
}
return output;
}
static void Main()
{
int[] firstArray = new int[3] { 0, 0, 5 };
int[] secondArray = new int[3] { 0, 0,5 };
int[] output = SumOfBigNumbers(firstArray, secondArray);
foreach (var i in output)
{
Console.WriteLine(output[i]);
}
}
Edit: better if I copy the task: Write a method that calculates the sum of two very long positive integer numbers. The numbers are represented as array digits and the last digit (the ones) is stored in the array at index 0. Make the method work for all numbers with length up to 10,000 digits.

While BigInteger is a better way to handle big numbers, I think your bug is in while printing the output. try this:
foreach (var i in output)
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
also this will print 0001, better reverse it while printing

Your code works fine but you have a small bug where you display the output array.
You do a foreach (var i in output) {, but you use the i as an index, which it isn't. It is already the actual value. Just write the i to the console.
foreach (var i in output)
{
Console.WriteLine(i);
}
// Output:
// 0
// 0
// 0
// 1
Or use a for loop to go through the array by index.
for (int i = 0; i < output.Length; i++)
{
Console.WriteLine(output[i]);
}
// Output:
// 0
// 0
// 0
// 1

Find all possible combinations of word with and without hyphens

For a string that may have zero or more hyphens in it, I need to extract all the different possibilities with and without hyphens.
For example, the string "A-B" would result in "A-B" and "AB" (two possibilities).
The string "A-B-C" would result in "A-B-C", "AB-C", "A-BC" and "ABC" (four possibilities).
The string "A-B-C-D" would result in "A-B-C-D", "AB-C-D", "A-BC-D", "A-B-CD", "AB-CD", "ABC-D", "A-BCD" and "ABCD" (eight possibilities).
...etc, etc.
I've experimented with some nested loops but haven't been able to get anywhere near the desired result. I suspect I need something recursive unless there is some simple solution I am overlooking.
NB. This is to build a SQL query (shame that SQL Server does't have MySQL's REGEXP pattern matching).
Here is one attempt I was working on. This might work if I do this recursively.
string keyword = "A-B-C-D";
List<int> hyphens = new List<int>();
int pos = keyword.IndexOf('-');
while (pos != -1)
{
hyphens.Add(pos);
pos = keyword.IndexOf('-', pos + 1);
}
for (int i = 0; i < hyphens.Count(); i++)
{
string result = keyword.Substring(0, hyphens[i]) + keyword.Substring(hyphens[i] + 1);
Response.Write("<p>" + result);
}
A B C D are words of varying length.

Take a look at your sample cases. Have you noticed a pattern?
With 1 hyphen there are 2 possibilities.
With 2 hyphens there are 4 possibilities.
With 3 hyphens there are 8 possibilities.
The number of possibilities is 2n.
This is literally exponential growth, so if there are too many hyphens in the string, it will quickly become infeasible to print them all. (With just 30 hyphens there are over a billion combinations!)
That said, for smaller numbers of hyphens it might be interesting to generate a list. To do this, you can think of each hyphen as a bit in a binary number. If the bit is 1, the hyphen is present, otherwise it is not. So this suggests a fairly straightforward solution:
Split the original string on the hyphens
Let n = the number of hyphens
Count from 2n - 1 down to 0. Treat this counter as a bitmask.
For each count begin building a string starting with the first part.
Concatenate each of the remaining parts to the string in order, preceded by a hyphen only if the corresponding bit in the bitmask is set.
Add the resulting string to the output and continue until the counter is exhausted.
Translated to code we have:
public static IEnumerable<string> EnumerateHyphenatedStrings(string s)
{
string[] parts = s.Split('-');
int n = parts.Length - 1;
if (n > 30) throw new Exception("too many hyphens");
for (int m = (1 << n) - 1; m >= 0; m--)
{
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder(parts[0]);
for (int i = 1; i <= n; i++)
{
if ((m & (1 << (i - 1))) > 0) sb.Append('-');
sb.Append(parts[i]);
}
yield return sb.ToString();
}
}
Fiddle: https://dotnetfiddle.net/ne3N8f

You should be able to track each hyphen position, and basically say its either there or not there. Loop through all the combinations, and you got all your strings. I found the easiest way to track it was using a binary, since its easy to add those with Convert.ToInt32
I came up with this:
string keyword = "A-B-C-D";
string[] keywordSplit = keyword.Split('-');
int combinations = Convert.ToInt32(Math.Pow(2.0, keywordSplit.Length - 1.0));
List<string> results = new List<string>();
for (int j = 0; j < combinations; j++)
{
string result = "";
string hyphenAdded = Convert.ToString(j, 2).PadLeft(keywordSplit.Length - 1, '0');
// Generate string
for (int i = 0; i < keywordSplit.Length; i++)
{
result += keywordSplit[i] +
((i < keywordSplit.Length - 1) && (hyphenAdded[i].Equals('1')) ? "-" : "");
}
results.Add(result);
}

This works for me:
Func<IEnumerable<string>, IEnumerable<string>> expand = null;
expand = xs =>
{
if (xs != null && xs.Any())
{
var head = xs.First();
if (xs.Skip(1).Any())
{
return expand(xs.Skip(1)).SelectMany(tail => new []
{
head + tail,
head + "-" + tail
});
}
else
{
return new [] { head };
}
}
else
{
return Enumerable.Empty<string>();
}
};
var keyword = "A-B-C-D";
var parts = keyword.Split('-');
var results = expand(parts);
I get:
ABCD
A-BCD
AB-CD
A-B-CD
ABC-D
A-BC-D
AB-C-D
A-B-C-D

I've tested this code and it is working as specified in the question. I stored the strings in a List<string>.
string str = "AB-C-D-EF-G-HI";
string[] splitted = str.Split('-');
List<string> finalList = new List<string>();
string temp = "";
for (int i = 0; i < splitted.Length; i++)
{
temp += splitted[i];
}
finalList.Add(temp);
temp = "";
for (int diff = 0; diff < splitted.Length-1; diff++)
{
for (int start = 1, limit = start + diff; limit < splitted.Length; start++, limit++)
{
int i = 0;
while (i < start)
{
temp += splitted[i++];
}
while (i <= limit)
{
temp += "-";
temp += splitted[i++];
}
while (i < splitted.Length)
{
temp += splitted[i++];
}
finalList.Add(temp);
temp = "";
}
}

I'm not sure your question is entirely well defined (i.e. could you have something like A-BCD-EF-G-H?). For "fully" hyphenated strings (A-B-C-D-...-Z), something like this should do:
string toParse = "A-B-C-D";
char[] toParseChars = toPase.toCharArray();
string result = "";
string binary;
for(int i = 0; i < (int)Math.pow(2, toParse.Length/2); i++) { // Number of subsets of an n-elt set is 2^n
binary = Convert.ToString(i, 2);
while (binary.Length < toParse.Length/2) {
binary = "0" + binary;
}
char[] binChars = binary.ToCharArray();
for (int k = 0; k < binChars.Length; k++) {
result += toParseChars[k*2].ToString();
if (binChars[k] == '1') {
result += "-";
}
}
result += toParseChars[toParseChars.Length-1];
Console.WriteLine(result);
}
The idea here is that we want to create a binary word for each possible hyphen. So, if we have A-B-C-D (three hyphens), we create binary words 000, 001, 010, 011, 100, 101, 110, and 111. Note that if we have n hyphens, we need 2^n binary words.
Then each word maps to the output you desire by inserting the hyphen where we have a '1' in our word (000 -> ABCD, 001 -> ABC-D, 010 -> AB-CD, etc). I didn't test the code above, but this is at least one way to solve the problem for fully hyphenated words.
Disclaimer: I didn't actually test the code