I was recently asked this question in an interview:
"How could you parse a string of the form '12345' into its integer representation 12345 without using any library functions, and regardless of language?"
I thought of two answers, but the interviewer said there was a third. Here are my two solutions:
Solution 1: Keep a dictionary which maps '1' => 1, '2' => 2, etc. Then parse the string one character at a time, look up the character in your dictionary, and multiply by place value. Sum the results.
Solution 2: Parse the string one character at a time and subtract '0' from each character. This will give you '1' - '0' = 0x1, '2' - '0' = 0x2, etc. Again, multiply by place value and sum the results.
Can anyone think of what a third solution might be?
Thanks.
I expect this is what the interviewer was after:
number = "12345"
value = 0
for digit in number: //Read most significant digit first
value = value * 10 + valueOf(digit)
This method uses far less operations than the method you outlined.
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