Develop Reference

HackerRank Game of Thrones

I am trying to solve this problem on HackerRank and I am having a issue with my logic. I am confused and not able to think what I'm doing wrong, feels like I'm stuck in logic.
Question link: https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/game-of-thrones/
I created a dictionary of alphabets with value 0. And then counting number of times the alphabet appears in the string. If there are more than 1 alphabet characters occurring 1 times in string, then obviously that string cannot become a palindrome. That's my logic, however it only pass 10/21 test cases.
Here's my code:
def gameOfThrones(s):
alpha_dict = {chr(x): 0 for x in range(97,123)}
counter = 0
for i in s:
if i in alpha_dict:
alpha_dict[i] += 1
for key in alpha_dict.values():
if key == 1:
counter += 1
if counter <= 1:
return 'YES'
else:
return 'NO'
Any idea where I'm going wrong?

Explanation
The issue is that the code doesn't really look for palindromes. Let's step through it with a sample text based on a valid one that they gave: aaabbbbb (the only difference between this and their example is that there is an extra b).
Your first for loop counts how many times the letters appear in the string. In this case, 3 a and 5 b with all the other characters showing up 0 times (quick aside, the end of the range function is exclusive so this would not count any z characters that might show up).
The next for loop counts how many character there are that show up only once in the string. This string is made up of multiple a and b characters, more than the check that you have for if key == 1 so it doesn't trigger it. Since the count is less than 1, it returns YES and exits. However aaabbbbb is not a palindrome unscrambled.
Suggestion
To fix it, I would suggest having more than just one function so you can break down exactly what you need. For example, you can have a function that would return a list of all the unscrambled possibilities.
def allUnscrambled(string)->list:
# find all possible iterations of the string
# if given 'aabb', return 'aabb', 'abab', 'abba', 'bbaa', 'baba', 'baab'
return lstOfStrings
After this, create a palindrome checker. You can use the one shown by Dmitriy or create your own.
def checkIfPalindrome(string)->bool:
# determine if the given string is a palindrome
return isOrNotPalindrome
Put the two together to get a function that will, given a list of strings, determine if at least one of them is a palindrome. If it is, that means the original string is an anagrammed palindrome.
def palindromeInList(lst)->bool:
# given the list of strings from allUnscrambled(str), is any of them a palindrome?
return isPalindromeInList
Your function gameOfThrones(s) can then call this palindromeInList( allUnscrambled(s) ) and then return YES or NO depending on the result. Breaking it up into smaller pieces and delegating tasks is usually a good way to handle these problems.

Corrected the logic in my solution. I was just comparing key == 1 and not with every odd element.
So the corrected code looks like:
for key in alpha_dict.values():
if key % 2 == 1:
counter += 1
It passes all the testcases on HackerRank website.

The property that you have to check on the input string is that the number of characters with odd repetitions must be less than 1. So, the main ingredients to cook you recipe are:
a counter for each character
an hash map to store the counters, having the characters as keys
iterate over the input string
A plain implementation could be:
def gameOfThrones(s):
counters = {}
for c in s:
counters[c] = counters.get(c, 0) + 1
n_odd_characters = sum(v % 2 for v in counters.values())
Using a functional approach, based on reduce from functools:
from functools import reduce
def gamesOfThrones(s):
return ['NO', 'YES'][len(reduce(
lambda x, y: (x | {y: 1}) if y not in x else (x.pop(y) and x),
s,
{}
)) <= 1]
If you want, you can use the Counter class from collections to make your code more concise:
def gamesOfThrones(s):
return ['NO', 'YES'][sum([v % 2 for v in Counter(s).values() ]) <= 1]

Dynamically add arguments in if condition in python

I am writing code for a tick-tac-toe game that uses grids. I am trying to check the condition where all the cells of a row match with each other, so that players can be declared winners. Also, I am using dynamic sizes of board (3 by 3, 4 by 4, 5 by 5....). So for this purpose, I am using if condition in a for loop. The problem is that I can't figure out a way to add arguments dynamically to the if statement. The if defined is static and I can't add the condition of the last cell of the row (if size increases from 3 by 3 to 4 by 4).
expected outcome:
3 by 3 grid:
count = 0
for i in range(dim):
if grid[count]=="X" and grid[1+ count]=="X" and grid[2+ count]=="X":
count1 = 0
print ("Player X win")
print ("-------------")
for i in range(dim):
print(grid[0 + count1 : dim + count1])
count1 =+ dim
print ("-------------")
count += dim
I am trying to loop for all rows to check the match.
What I want is to change the if grid[count]=="X" and grid[1+ count]=="X" and grid[2+ count]=="X": to incorporate the change of the grid size from
3 by 3 to
4 by 4
if grid[count]=="X" and grid[1+ count]=="X" and grid[2+ count]=="X" and grid[3+ count]=="X":
5 by 5
if grid[count]=="X" and grid[1+ count]=="X" and grid[2+ count]=="X" and grid[3+ count]=="X" and grid[4+ count]=="X":
is there a better way to do this?

You can use all() with a generator expression for this:
if all(grid[count + i] == "X" for i in range(dim)):
There's also a corresponding any() for or conditions
There are three pieces to how this works:
Comprehensions; we can write a list like [grid[count + i] == "X" for i in range(dim)] which will evaluate to something like [True, True, False, True]; it's basically a short-hand for a for loop that produces a list (or a dict or a set, if we use {}).
The all() (or any()) function; this is a simple function that takes a list and returns whether all (any) are true; all([True, True, False, True]) is False
Generator expressions; generators are basically single-use lists where the values are calculated only as they're needed. The syntax for a generator expression is either omitting the [], as here; or using round brackets (), where the syntax would otherwise be too confusing.
Because the values are calculated only as needed, this can be very valuable if we don't want to (or can't) store all the values in memory at once, or if we're likely to only look at the first few values. The all() function does that - it only checks as far as needed for the result to become clear. That's not much of an advantage when there's only going to be 3-5 values with a simple calculation, of course; here, it's mostly that it looks neater without the [].
One downside of generators is that they don't print well; you have to convert them to list to print out the items, and then you've used them up and can't use them again in the calculation. For debugging, the [grid[count + i] == "X" for i in range(dim)] form is more convenient.

How does comparing two chars (within a string) work in Python

I am starting to learn Python and looked at following website: https://www.w3resource.com/python-exercises/string/
I work on #4 which is "Write a Python program to get a string from a given string where all occurrences of its first char have been changed to '$', except the first char itself."
str="restart"
char=str[0]
print(char)
strcpy=str
i=1
for i in range(len(strcpy)):
print(strcpy[i], "\n")
if strcpy[i] is char:
strcpy=strcpy.replace(strcpy[i], '$')
print(strcpy)
I would expect "resta$t" but the actual result is: $esta$t
Thank you for your help!

There are two issues, first, you are not starting iteration where you think you are:
i = 1 # great, i is 1
for i in range(5):
print(i)
0
1
2
3
4
i has been overwritten by the value tracking the loop.
Second, the is does not mean value equivalence. That is reserved for the == operator. Simpler types such as int and str can make it seem like is works in this fashion, but other types do not behave this way:
a, b = 5, 5
a is b
True
a, b = "5", "5"
a is b
True
a==b
True
### This doesn't work
a, b = [], []
a is b
False
a == b
True
As #Kevin pointed out in the comments, 99% of the time, is is not the operator you want.
As far as your code goes, str.replace will replace all instances of the argument supplied with the second arg, unless you give it an optional number of instances to replace. To avoid replacing the first character, grab the first char separately, like val = somestring[0], then replace the rest using a slice, no need for iteration:
somestr = 'restart' # don't use str as a variable name
val = somestr[0] # val is 'r'
# somestr[1:] gives 'estart'
x = somestr[1:].replace(val, '$')
print(val+x)
# resta$t
If you still want to iterate, you can do that over the slice as well:
# collect your letters into a list
letters = []
char = somestr[0]
for letter in somestr[1:]: # No need to track an index here
if letter == char: # don't use is, use == for value comparison
letter = '$' # change letter to a different value if it is equal to char
letters.append(letter)
# Then use join to concatenate back to a string
print(char + ''.join(letters))
# resta$t

There are some need of modification on your code.
Modify your code with as given in below.
strcpy="restart"
i=1
for i in range(len(strcpy)):
strcpy=strcpy.replace(strcpy[0], '$')[:]
print(strcpy)
# $esta$t
Also, the best practice to write code in Python is to use Function. You can modify your code as given below or You can use this function.
def charreplace(s):
return s.replace(s[0],'$')[:]
charreplace("restart")
#'$esta$t'
Hope this helpful.

Python: How to check if two inputs A and B are anagrams without all punctuation, and all uppercase letters were lower case letters

The first part of the question is to check if input A and input B are anagrams, which I can do easily enough.
s = input ("Word 1?")
b = sorted(s)
c = ''.join(b)
t = input("Word 2?")
a = sorted(t)
d = ''.join(b)
if d == c:
print("Anagram!")
else:
print("Not Anagram!")
The problem is the second part of the question - I need to check if two words are anagrams if all of the punctuation is removed, the upper case letters turned to lower case, but the question assumes no spaces are used. So, for example, (ACdB;,.Eo,."kl) and (oadcbE,LK) are anagrams. The question also asks for loops to be used.
s = input ("Word 1?")
s = s.lower()
for i in range (0, len(s)):
if ord(s[i]) < 97 or ord(s[i]) >122:
s = s.replace(s[i], '')
b = sorted(s)
c = ''.join(b)
print(c)
Currently, the above code is saying the string index is out of range.

Here's the loop you need to add, in psuedocode:
s = input ("Word 1?")
s_letters = ''
for letter in s:
if it's punctuation: skip it
else if it's uppercase: add the lowercase version to s_letters
else: add it to s_letters
b = sorted(s_letters)
Except of course that you need to add the same thing for t as well. If you've learned about functions, you will want to write this as a function, and call it twice, instead of copying and pasting it with minor changes.

There are three big problems with your loop. You need to solve all three of these, not just one.
First, s = s.replace(s[i], '') doesn't replace the ith character with a space, it replaces the ith character and every other copy of the same character with a space. That's going to screw up the rest of your loop if there are any duplicates. It's also very slow, because you have to search the entire string over and over again.
The right way to replace the character at a specific index is to use slicing: s = s[:i] + s[i+1:].
Or, you could make this a lot simpler by turning the string into a list of characters (s = list(s)), you can mutate it in-place (del s[i]).
Next, we're going through the loop 6 times, checking s[0], s[1], s[2], s[3], s[4], and s[5]. But somewhere along the way, we're going to remove some of the characters (ideally three of them). So some of those indices will be past the end of the string, which will raise an IndexError. I won't explain how to fix this yet, because it ties directly into the next problem.
Modifying a sequence while you loop over it always breaks your loop.* Imagine starting with s = '123abc'. Let's step through the loop.
i = 0, so you check s[0], which is 1, so you remove it, leaving s = '23abc'.
i = 1, so you check s[1], which is 3, so you remove it, leaving s = '2abc'.
i = 2, so you check s[2], which is b, so you leave it, leaving s = '2abc'.
And so on.
The 2 got moved to s[0] by removing the 1. But you're never going to come back to i = 0 once you've passed it. So, you're never going to check the 2. You can solve this in a few different ways—iterating backward, doing a while instead of an if each time through the for, etc.—but most of those solutions will just exacerbate the previous problem.
The easy way to solve both problems is to just not modify the string while you loop over it. You could do this by, e.g., building up a list of indexes to remove as you go along, then applying that in reverse order.
But a much easier way to do it is to just build up the characters you want to keep as you go along. And that also solves the first problem for your automatically.
So:
new_s = []
for i in range (0, len(s)):
if ord(s[i]) < 97 or ord(s[i]) >122:
pass
else:
new_s.append(s[i])
b = sorted(new_s)
And with that relative minor change, your code works.
While we're at it, there are a few ways you're overcomplicating things.
First, you don't need to do ord(s[i]) < 97; you can just do s[i] < 'a'. This makes things a lot more readable.
But, even more simply, you can just use the isalpha or islower method. (Since you've already converted to lower, and you're only dealing with one character at a time, it doesn't really matter which.) Besides being more readable, and harder to get wrong, this has the advantage of working with non-ASCII characters, like é.
Finally, you almost never want to write a loop like this:
for i in range(len(s)):
That forces you to write s[i] all over the place, when you could have just looped over s in the first place:
for ch in s:
So, putting it all together, here's your code, with the two simple fixes, and the cleanup:
s = input ("Word 1?")
s = s.lower()
new_s = []
for ch in s:
if ch.isalpha():
new_s.append(ch)
b = sorted(new_s)
c = ''.join(b)
print(c)
If you know about comprehensions or higher-order functions, you'll recognize this pattern as exactly what a list comprehension does. So, you can turn the whole 4 lines of code that build new_s into either of these one-liners, which are more readable as well as being shorter:
new_s = (ch for ch in s if ch.isalpha)
new_s = filter(str.isalpha, s)
And in fact, the whole thing can become a one-liner:
b = sorted(ch for ch in s.lower() if ch.isalpha)
But your teacher asked you to use a for statement, so you'd better keep it as a for statement.
* This isn't quite true. If you only modify the part of the sequence after the current index, and you make sure the sequence aways has the right length by the time you get to each index even though it may have had a different length before you did (using a while loop instead of a for loop, to reevaluate len(seq) each time, makes this part trivial instead of hard), then it works. But it's easier to just never do it to than learn the rules and carefully analyze your code to see if you're getting away with it this time.

Swapping every second character in a string in Python

I have the following problem: I would like to write a function in Python which, given a string, returns a string where every group of two characters is swapped.
For example given "ABCDEF" it returns "BADCFE".
The length of the string would be guaranteed to be an even number.
Can you help me how to do it in Python?

To add another option:
>>> s = 'abcdefghijkl'
>>> ''.join([c[1] + c[0] for c in zip(s[::2], s[1::2])])
'badcfehgjilk'

import re
print re.sub(r'(.)(.)', r'\2\1', "ABCDEF")

from itertools import chain, izip_longest
''.join(chain.from_iterable(izip_longest(s[1::2], s[::2], fillvalue = '')))
You can also use islices instead of regular slices if you have very large strings or just want to avoid the copying.
Works for odd length strings even though that's not a requirement of the question.

While the above solutions do work, there is a very simple solution shall we say in "layman's" terms. Someone still learning python and string's can use the other answers but they don't really understand how they work or what each part of the code is doing without a full explanation by the poster as opposed to "this works". The following executes the swapping of every second character in a string and is easy for beginners to understand how it works.
It is simply iterating through the string (any length) by two's (starting from 0 and finding every second character) and then creating a new string (swapped_pair) by adding the current index + 1 (second character) and then the actual index (first character), e.g., index 1 is put at index 0 and then index 0 is put at index 1 and this repeats through iteration of string.
Also added code to ensure string is of even length as it only works for even length.
string = "abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz123"
# use this prior to below iteration if string needs to be even but is possibly odd
if len(string) % 2 != 0:
string = string[:-1]
# iteration to swap every second character in string
swapped_pair = ""
for i in range(0, len(string), 2):
swapped_pair += (string[i + 1] + string[i])
# use this after above iteration for any even or odd length of strings
if len(swapped_pair) % 2 != 0:
swapped_adj += swapped_pair[-1]
print(swapped_pair)
badcfehgjilknmporqtsvuxwzy21 # output if the "needs to be even" code used
badcfehgjilknmporqtsvuxwzy213 # output if the "even or odd" code used

Here's a nifty solution:
def swapem (s):
if len(s) < 2: return s
return "%s%s%s"%(s[1], s[0], swapem (s[2:]))
for str in ("", "a", "ab", "abcdefgh", "abcdefghi"):
print "[%s] -> [%s]"%(str, swapem (str))
though possibly not suitable for large strings :-)
Output is:
[] -> []
[a] -> [a]
[ab] -> [ba]
[abcdefgh] -> [badcfehg]
[abcdefghi] -> [badcfehgi]

If you prefer one-liners:
''.join(reduce(lambda x,y: x+y,[[s[1+(x<<1)],s[x<<1]] for x in range(0,len(s)>>1)]))

Here's a another simple solution:
"".join([(s[i:i+2])[::-1]for i in range(0,len(s),2)])