It was a Professional level coding test, where we were given 4 hours to solve One problem.
There is a highway that has damages at N (4<=N<=100) locations. Each damage location is represented by a number a (0<=a<=10000). You need to repair these damages with Asphalt. The damage is repaired with these rules:
- Asphalt can be spread on the road with a minimum stretch of K (1<=K<=10000) i.e. each time you put asphalt, it will be spread to k consecutive locations. eg. if the damage is at locations 2, 5 and K=3 then the first asphalt spread is from 0-2 or 1-3 or 2-4 and the second is from 3-5 or 4-6 or 5-7.
- You need to spread minimum Asphalt to repair all damaged locations of the road. For the above example, the minimum asphalt required is 4 units ( 2-4 and 3-5) because 3-4 is overlapping.
Example test cases:
Input:-
N K
A[0] A[1] …….. A[N-1]
Output:-
Minimum Asphalt area to repair all damages.
1.
10 2
0 10 2 12 4 14 6 16 8 18
output: 15
2.
4 3
3 9 11 8
output: 7
3.
8 3
2Â 7 20 5 19 9 6 22
output: 12
Please let me know if there is any confusion in the question!!