JavaScript Katas: Missing values

Intro 🌐

Problem solving is an important skill, for your career and your life in general.

That's why I take interesting katas of all levels, customize them and explain how to solve them.

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Understanding the Exercise❗

First, we need to understand the exercise!
If you don't understand it, you can't solve it!.

My personal method:

1. Input: What do I put in?
2. Output: What do I want to get out?

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Today's exercise

Today, another 7 kyu kata,
meaning we slightly increase the difficulty.

Source: Codewars

Write a function missingValues, that accepts one parameter: myArray.

Given an array of number, e.g. [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3],

find:

• the number x, that appears once, e.g. 3
• the number y, that appears twice, e.g. 2

and return the product x * x * y, e.g. 18 (=> 3 x 3 x 2).

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Input: an array of numbers.

Output: a number.

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Thinking about the Solution 💭

I think I understand the exercise (= what I put into the function and what I want to get out of it).

Now, I need the specific steps to get from input to output.

I try to do this in small baby steps:

1. Find the number that appears once, x
2. Find the number that appears twice, y
3. Return the product of x * x * y

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Example:

• Input: [1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3]
• Find the number that appears once, x: 3
• Find the number that appears twice, y: 2
• Return the product of x * x * y: 18 (=> 3 x 3 x 2)
• Output: 18 ✅

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Implementation ⛑

function missingValues(myArray) {
  // count amount of each number
  const count =  myArray.reduce(
    (acc, cur) =>
      acc.hasOwnProperty(cur)
        ? { ...acc, [cur]: acc[cur] + 1 }
        : { ...acc, [cur]: 1 },
    {}
  );

  // helper function to find the object key (= our number) that appears [amount] times
  const appears = (amount) =>
    Object.entries(count)
      .filter(([key, value]) => value === amount)
      .map((entry) => entry[0]);

  return appears(1) * appears(1) * appears(2);
}

Result

console.log([1, 1, 1, 2, 2, 3]);
// 18 ✅

console.log([6, 5, 4, 100, 6, 5, 4, 100, 6, 5, 4, 200]);
// 4000000 ✅

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Playground ⚽

You can play around with the code here

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Next Part ➡️

Great work!

We learned how to use reduce, filter, map, hasOwnProperty, Object.entries.

I hope you can use your new learnings to solve problems more easily!

Next time, we'll solve another interesting kata. Stay tuned!

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If I should solve a specific kata, shoot me a message here.

If you want to read my latest stuff, get in touch with me!

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Further Reading 📖

• reduce
• filter
• map
• hasOwnProperty
• Object.entries

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Questions ❔

• How often do you do katas?
• Which implementation do you like more? Why?
• Any alternative solution?

Comments

[pentacular]

This doesn't look like a very reasonable use of reduce.

I'd suggest starting with something like this.

const count = new Map();
for (const item of list) {
  count.set(item, (count.get(item) || 0) + 1);
}