Saturday, July 16, 2016

ZigZag Conversion

The string "PAYPALISHIRING" is written in a zigzag pattern on a given number of rows like this: (you may want to display this pattern in a fixed font for better legibility)
P   A   H   N
A P L S I I G
Y   I   R
And then read line by line: "PAHNAPLSIIGYIR"
Write the code that will take a string and make this conversion given a number of rows:
string convert(string text, int nRows);
convert("PAYPALISHIRING", 3) should return "PAHNAPLSIIGYIR".

Solution:

class Solution {
public:
    string convert(string s, int numRows) {
        vector<string> ans(numRows);
        string sol;
        if (s.empty() || numRows == 1)
            return s;
        // metadata for number of vector<string>
        bool flag = false;
        int j = 0;
           
        int size = s.size();
        for (int i = 0; i < size; i++) {
            if (flag == false) {
                ans[j++].push_back(s[i]);
                flag = (j == numRows ? true : false);
                if (flag == true)
                    j--;
            } else {
                ans[--j].push_back(s[i]);
                flag = (j == 0 ? false : true);
                if (flag == false)
                    j++;
            }
        }
       
        for (int i = 0; i < numRows; i++) {
            sol += ans[i];
        }
        return sol;
    }
};

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