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3110. Score of a String

Description

You are given a string s. The score of a string is defined as the sum of the absolute difference between the ASCII values of adjacent characters.

Return the score of s.

 

Example 1:

Input: s = "hello"

Output: 13

Explanation:

The ASCII values of the characters in s are: 'h' = 104, 'e' = 101, 'l' = 108, 'o' = 111. So, the score of s would be |104 - 101| + |101 - 108| + |108 - 108| + |108 - 111| = 3 + 7 + 0 + 3 = 13.

Example 2:

Input: s = "zaz"

Output: 50

Explanation:

The ASCII values of the characters in s are: 'z' = 122, 'a' = 97. So, the score of s would be |122 - 97| + |97 - 122| = 25 + 25 = 50.

 

Constraints:

  • 2 <= s.length <= 100
  • s consists only of lowercase English letters.

Solutions

Solution 1: Simulation

Thinking

The score is the sum of absolute ASCII differences of adjacent characters, which is already a single linear scan.

No preprocessing is needed at the given length. Adjacent pairs are independent.

Map \(s\) to code points, take absolute differences of neighbors, and sum them. Time is linear and extra space is constant.

We directly traverse the string \(s\), calculating the sum of the absolute differences of the ASCII codes of adjacent characters.

The time complexity is \(O(n)\), where \(n\) is the length of the string \(s\). The space complexity is \(O(1)\).

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class Solution:
    def scoreOfString(self, s: str) -> int:
        return sum(abs(a - b) for a, b in pairwise(map(ord, s)))

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class Solution {
    public int scoreOfString(String s) {
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 1; i < s.length(); ++i) {
            ans += Math.abs(s.charAt(i - 1) - s.charAt(i));
        }
        return ans;
    }
}

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class Solution {
public:
    int scoreOfString(string s) {
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 1; i < s.size(); ++i) {
            ans += abs(s[i] - s[i - 1]);
        }
        return ans;
    }
};

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func scoreOfString(s string) (ans int) {
    for i := 1; i < len(s); i++ {
        ans += abs(int(s[i-1]) - int(s[i]))
    }
    return
}

func abs(x int) int {
    if x < 0 {
        return -x
    }
    return x
}

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function scoreOfString(s: string): number {
    let ans = 0;
    for (let i = 1; i < s.length; ++i) {
        ans += Math.abs(s.charCodeAt(i) - s.charCodeAt(i - 1));
    }
    return ans;
}

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impl Solution {
    pub fn score_of_string(s: String) -> i32 {
        s.as_bytes()
            .windows(2)
            .map(|w| (w[0] as i32 - w[1] as i32).abs())
            .sum()
    }
}

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public class Solution {
    public int ScoreOfString(string s) {
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 1; i < s.Length; ++i) {
            ans += Math.Abs(s[i] - s[i - 1]);
        }
        return ans;
    }
}

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class Solution {
    /**
     * @param String $s
     * @return Integer
     */
    function scoreOfString($s) {
        $ans = 0;
        $n = strlen($s);
        for ($i = 1; $i < $n; ++$i) {
            $ans += abs(ord($s[$i]) - ord($s[$i - 1]));
        }
        return $ans;
    }
}

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