Bracket Inc. wants to ship out new products using their excess brackets. They have tasked you with generating every possible assortment of brackets for some n brackets where the brackets will match

  • A bracket match is an opening and closing version of the same kind of bracket beside each other ()
  • If a bracket matches then outer brackets can also match (())
  • n will be an even number
  • The valid brackets are ()[]{}

For example for n = 4 the options are

  • ()()
  • (())
  • [][]
  • [[]]
  • {}{}
  • {{}}
  • []()
  • ()[]
  • (){}
  • {}()
  • []{}
  • {}[]
  • ({})
  • {()}
  • ([])
  • [()]
  • {[]}
  • [{}]

You must accept n as a command line argument (entered when your app is ran) and print out all of the matches, one per line

(It will be called like node main.js 4 or however else to run apps in your language)

You can use the solution tester in this post to test you followed the correct format https://programming.dev/post/1805174

Any programming language may be used. 2 points will be given if you pass all the test cases with 1 bonus point going to whoevers performs the quickest and 1 for whoever can get the least amount of characters

To submit put the code and the language you used below

  • shape-warrior-t@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    Here’s my Python solution. If my reasoning is all correct, it should (in theory) run in O(n * (number of matches)), which should be optimal since it takes at least that long to print out the results anyway. IF my reasoning is all correct, and my program is all correct.

    closing_to_opening = {')': '(', ']': '[', '}': '{'}
    
    def main(n: int) -> list[str]:
        assert n % 2 == 0, f'n must be even; got {n=}'
        acc: list = [(n // 2, None, None)]
        for i in range(n):
            new_acc = []
            for closing_brackets_left, unmatched_series, full_series in acc:
                if unmatched_series is not None:
                    most_recent_closing_bracket, rest = unmatched_series
                    matching_opening_bracket = closing_to_opening[most_recent_closing_bracket]
                    new_acc.append((closing_brackets_left, rest, (matching_opening_bracket, full_series)))
                if closing_brackets_left > 0:
                    for bracket in [')', ']', '}']:
                        new_acc.append((closing_brackets_left - 1, (bracket, unmatched_series), (bracket, full_series)))
            acc = new_acc
        result = []
        for _, _, series in acc:
            series_as_list = []
            for _ in range(n):
                bracket, series = series
                series_as_list.append(bracket)
            result.append(''.join(series_as_list))
        return result
    
    if __name__ == '__main__':
        from argparse import ArgumentParser
        parser = ArgumentParser()
        parser.add_argument('n')
        result = main(int(parser.parse_args().n))
        print('\n'.join(result))
    
    

    Idea: The matches of size n are precisely the strings with n/2 closing brackets, n/2 opening brackets, and brackets arranged so that each closing bracket matches up with the opening bracket on the “top of the stack” when processing the string and removing matches. We build the strings backwards. For each match-in-construction, we track the number of closing brackets left to be added, the “stack” (but working backwards, so the roles of opening and closing brackets are reversed), and, of course, the actual string. We transform each match-in-construction into 1, 3, or 4 new matches-in-construction, adding one character at a time: the opening bracket that matches the closing bracket on the top of the stack (if any), and the three closing brackets (if we still have closing brackets to add). Because appending to strings is O(n) since we need to copy, and pushing and popping from Python lists creates mutable aliasing issues (and would take O(n) to copy, just like with strings), we do a Lisp and use cons cells to create lists instead (hence, the backwards building). I suspect it gives the same asymptotic runtime anyway, but I don’t actually know whether that’s true.