Discussion on: Daily Challenge #51 - Valid Curly Braces

[Josh]

Ahh, this old trick. I've done it for at least two interviewers this summer. Terrific way for them to determine how good I am at building Rails applications, but, I digress.

def balanced?(string, left, right)
  raise ArgumentError.new("Can't compare individual characters to a character sequence") if left.length >1 || right.length > 1
  string.chars.reduce(0) do |count, char|
    return false if count < 0
    count += 1 if char == left
    count -= 1 if char == right
  end.zero?
end

def areCurlyBracesMatched(string)
  balanced?(string, "{", "}")
end