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Javascript Sock Merchant Challenge - Solution 1

Ady Ngom on April 23, 2019

READ FIRST: As noted in the comments and on the twitter thread, the solution in part 1 is not necessarily a performant one. A second solution will ...
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bhaveshg profile image
BHAVESH GUPTA

A better approach:
Runtime: O(n)

  1. Take input array as A.
  2. Declare a dictionary, D.
  3. Iterate over A and store each values frequency as:

    if i exists in D, then D[i]=D[i]+1
    else, D[i]=1

  4. Iterate over D and sum half of each key-value pair.

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adyngom profile image
Ady Ngom

Hello Bhavesh, thank you for your input. This is the first solution and not necessarily the most performant one as I have stated in the video. If you look at the gist that was created for this project here Sock merchant solutions you will that the second solution that is coming in part 2 is using the dictionary approach tou have suggested


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javascript
function stockAndCount( n, arr ) {
let pairs = 0;
const colors = arr.reduce((acc, val) => {
(!!acc[val]) ? acc[val] += 1 : acc[val] = 1;
return acc;
}, {});

Object.keys(colors).forEach( n => {
    let _pair = parseInt( colors[n] / 2);
    if ( _pair >= 1 ) pairs += _pair;
});

return pairs;
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}


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Since this is unassuming of who is watching and what the level is, I start with the simple easy to grasp and evolve to the 'better' solution, better being relative here.

Stay tuned for the next episode and the reasoning why solution 2 will be a better approach.

Cheers

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bhaveshg profile image
BHAVESH GUPTA

Good work, Sir.

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kurisutofu profile image
kurisutofu • Edited

Could we add 0.5 to avoid reiteration and round up when getting the value for a specific color?

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adyngom profile image
Ady Ngom

Reiteration is prevented by skipping to 2 indexes down if a match is found. I’m not clear on how 0.5 will help here since we are looking at full pairs values

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kurisutofu profile image
kurisutofu

Yes, you're right. I somehow didn't notice you were using i++ and i+=1.
Sorry.

The 0.5 comment was regarding Bavesh's step 4, sorry I was not clear.

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liaowow profile image
Annie Liao

Thanks for this. I used a similar approach but forgot about the built-in sort method. Also, really appreciated your preface, which is very encouraging, esp. for someone who felt crushed for not being able to solve the "easy" challenge.

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adyngom profile image
Ady Ngom

Hey Annie thank you for the kind words and I'm so happy that you found the article helpful. No worries about being crushed we all go through those phases no matter how far we evolve in our careers.
Keep at it, and don't be hard on yourself. Speeding and rushing are two different things so let us all keep pacing ourselves.
Take care 🙂

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kurisutofu profile image
kurisutofu

I had the same idea as Bhavesh but looking at the code in the article (I could not watch the video so sorry if it's in there), I'm a little confused.

Is arr populated with only the color integer? Like [1,2,1,1,3] for example?

Also, if you have something like [1,1,1], does the function need to return 1 or 2?

1 pair and 1 lonely sock?
Or 2 possible pairs?

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adyngom profile image
Ady Ngom

Yes array is only populated with color integer and the challenge is specific about actual pairs so no possible. [1,1,1] should return 1 to satisfy the exercise requirements

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rodrigorellana profile image
Rodrigo Orellana

my version:

let ar = [1, 2, 1, 2, 1, 3, 2,1]

function sockMatching(ar) {
let tmp = [];
let dict = {}
let totalPares = 0;
ar.forEach(p => {
let idPar = 'p' + p;
if (!tmp.includes(p)) {
tmp.push(p);
dict[idPar] = 1;
} else {
dict[idPar]++;
if (dict[idPar] === 2) {
totalPares++;
dict[idPar] = 0;
}
}
})
return totalPares;
}

console.log(sockMatching(ar));

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mindmath profile image
Scale to zero • Edited

Ady
Thanks for this...
Its helping me understand the order of computation better

So overall it is O(nlogn) * O(n)

// Complete the sockMerchant function below.
func sockMerchant(n: Int, ar: [Int]) -> Int {
var pair = 0
let sortedArr = ar.sorted() // O(nlogn)
var i=0
while (i<(sortedArr.count-1)) { // O(nlogn * n)
if sortedArr[i]==sortedArr[i+1]{
pair += 1
i += 1
}
i += 1
}
return pair
}

sockMerchant(n: 9, ar: [10, 20, 20, 10, 10, 30, 50, 10, 20])

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rusimbipatrick profile image
Rusimbi Patrick

What is the time complexity on this one?