Counts the ways in which all characters in two given strings are placed alternately

In this article, we will discuss the concept of a counting method that alternates all the characters of two given strings. This question may come up in programming challenges and interviews, and mastering the solution will help improve your string manipulation and algorithmic skills. We will explain the problem statement, discuss the algorithm used, provide a C implementation, and provide an example test case to illustrate the solution.

Problem Statement

Given two strings s1 and s2, find the number of ways to alternately place all the characters of these two strings such that characters from s1 and s2 appear alternately in the final string.

algorithm

• Check the length of two strings.

• If the length difference between the two strings is greater than 1, 0 is returned because the characters cannot be alternated.

• If the lengths of the strings are equal, the result will be 2 because you can start from either s1 or s2.

• If the length difference is exactly 1, the result will be 1 since you can only start with the longer string.

C implementation

Example

#include <iostream>
#include <string>
#include <cstdlib>

int countWaysToPlaceAlternately(const std::string &s1, const std::string &s2) {
   int len1 = s1.length();
   int len2 = s2.length();
   int diff = abs(len1 - len2);
   
   if (diff > 1) {
      return 0;
   } else if (diff == 0) {
      return 2;
   } else {
      return 1;
   }
}

int main() {
   std::string s1 = "abc";
   std::string s2 = "de";
   
   int ways = countWaysToPlaceAlternately(s1, s2);
   std::cout << "The number of ways to place the characters alternately is: " << ways << std::endl;
   
   return 0;
}

Output

The number of ways to place the characters alternately is: 1

Test case example

Let us consider the following example −

• String 1: "abc"

• String 2: "de"

Since the length difference between the two strings is 1, there is only one way to alternate the characters, which is to start with the longer string (String 1). The final arrangement will be "adbec".

in conclusion

In this article we explore the problem of computing a way to alternately place all characters of two given strings. We discuss the algorithm, show the C implementation, and provide an example test case to demonstrate the solution. Mastering this question will help improve your string manipulation and algorithmic skills, which is crucial for programming challenges and interviews. Please make sure to compare the length of the input strings and handle them accordingly to get the correct results.

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