Introduction

In this blog post, we'll share the most commonly asked coding interview questions at Databricks. If you don't have months to study for your interviews, you can use AI tools like Chatmagic to generate solutions quickly and efficiently - helping you pass the interviews and get the job offer!

Problem #2: House Robber

You are a professional robber planning to rob houses along a street. Each house has a certain amount of money stashed, the only constraint stopping you from robbing each of them is that adjacent houses have security systems connected and it will automatically contact the police if two adjacent houses were broken into on the same night. Given an integer array nums representing the amount of money of each house, return the maximum amount of money you can rob tonight without alerting the police. Example 1: Input: nums = [1,2,3,1] Output: 4 Explanation: Rob house 1 (money = 1) and then rob house 3 (money = 3). Total amount you can rob = 1 + 3 = 4. Example 2: Input: nums = [2,7,9,3,1] Output: 12 Explanation: Rob house 1 (money = 2), rob house 3 (money = 9) and rob house 5 (money = 1). Total amount you can rob = 2 + 9 + 1 = 12. Constraints: 1 <= nums.length <= 100 0 <= nums[i] <= 400

Topics: Array, Dynamic Programming

Problem #3: House Robber II

You are a professional robber planning to rob houses along a street. Each house has a certain amount of money stashed. All houses at this place are arranged in a circle. That means the first house is the neighbor of the last one. Meanwhile, adjacent houses have a security system connected, and it will automatically contact the police if two adjacent houses were broken into on the same night. Given an integer array nums representing the amount of money of each house, return the maximum amount of money you can rob tonight without alerting the police. Example 1: Input: nums = [2,3,2] Output: 3 Explanation: You cannot rob house 1 (money = 2) and then rob house 3 (money = 2), because they are adjacent houses. Example 2: Input: nums = [1,2,3,1] Output: 4 Explanation: Rob house 1 (money = 1) and then rob house 3 (money = 3). Total amount you can rob = 1 + 3 = 4. Example 3: Input: nums = [1,2,3] Output: 3 Constraints: 1 <= nums.length <= 100 0 <= nums[i] <= 1000

Topics: Array, Dynamic Programming

Problem #6: Time Based Key-Value Store

Design a time-based key-value data structure that can store multiple values for the same key at different time stamps and retrieve the key's value at a certain timestamp. Implement the TimeMap class: TimeMap() Initializes the object of the data structure. void set(String key, String value, int timestamp) Stores the key key with the value value at the given time timestamp. String get(String key, int timestamp) Returns a value such that set was called previously, with timestamp_prev <= timestamp. If there are multiple such values, it returns the value associated with the largest timestamp_prev. If there are no values, it returns "". Example 1: Input ["TimeMap", "set", "get", "get", "set", "get", "get"] [[], ["foo", "bar", 1], ["foo", 1], ["foo", 3], ["foo", "bar2", 4], ["foo", 4], ["foo", 5]] Output [null, null, "bar", "bar", null, "bar2", "bar2"] Explanation TimeMap timeMap = new TimeMap(); timeMap.set("foo", "bar", 1); // store the key "foo" and value "bar" along with timestamp = 1. timeMap.get("foo", 1); // return "bar" timeMap.get("foo", 3); // return "bar", since there is no value corresponding to foo at timestamp 3 and timestamp 2, then the only value is at timestamp 1 is "bar". timeMap.set("foo", "bar2", 4); // store the key "foo" and value "bar2" along with timestamp = 4. timeMap.get("foo", 4); // return "bar2" timeMap.get("foo", 5); // return "bar2" Constraints: 1 <= key.length, value.length <= 100 key and value consist of lowercase English letters and digits. 1 <= timestamp <= 107 All the timestamps timestamp of set are strictly increasing. At most 2 * 105 calls will be made to set and get.

Topics: Hash Table, String, Binary Search, Design

Problem #7: Snapshot Array

Implement a SnapshotArray that supports the following interface: SnapshotArray(int length) initializes an array-like data structure with the given length. Initially, each element equals 0. void set(index, val) sets the element at the given index to be equal to val. int snap() takes a snapshot of the array and returns the snap_id: the total number of times we called snap() minus 1. int get(index, snap_id) returns the value at the given index, at the time we took the snapshot with the given snap_id Example 1: Input: ["SnapshotArray","set","snap","set","get"] [[3],[0,5],[],[0,6],[0,0]] Output: [null,null,0,null,5] Explanation: SnapshotArray snapshotArr = new SnapshotArray(3); // set the length to be 3 snapshotArr.set(0,5); // Set array[0] = 5 snapshotArr.snap(); // Take a snapshot, return snap_id = 0 snapshotArr.set(0,6); snapshotArr.get(0,0); // Get the value of array[0] with snap_id = 0, return 5 Constraints: 1 <= length <= 5 104 0 <= index < length 0 <= val <= 109 0 <= snap_id < (the total number of times we call snap()) At most 5 104 calls will be made to set, snap, and get.

Topics: Array, Hash Table, Binary Search, Design

Problem #8: Text Justification

Given an array of strings words and a width maxWidth, format the text such that each line has exactly maxWidth characters and is fully (left and right) justified. You should pack your words in a greedy approach; that is, pack as many words as you can in each line. Pad extra spaces ' ' when necessary so that each line has exactly maxWidth characters. Extra spaces between words should be distributed as evenly as possible. If the number of spaces on a line does not divide evenly between words, the empty slots on the left will be assigned more spaces than the slots on the right. For the last line of text, it should be left-justified, and no extra space is inserted between words. Note: A word is defined as a character sequence consisting of non-space characters only. Each word's length is guaranteed to be greater than 0 and not exceed maxWidth. The input array words contains at least one word. Example 1: Input: words = ["This", "is", "an", "example", "of", "text", "justification."], maxWidth = 16 Output: [ "This is an", "example of text", "justification. " ] Example 2: Input: words = ["What","must","be","acknowledgment","shall","be"], maxWidth = 16 Output: [ "What must be", "acknowledgment ", "shall be " ] Explanation: Note that the last line is "shall be " instead of "shall be", because the last line must be left-justified instead of fully-justified. Note that the second line is also left-justified because it contains only one word. Example 3: Input: words = ["Science","is","what","we","understand","well","enough","to","explain","to","a","computer.","Art","is","everything","else","we","do"], maxWidth = 20 Output: [ "Science is what we", "understand well", "enough to explain to", "a computer. Art is", "everything else we", "do " ] Constraints: 1 <= words.length <= 300 1 <= words[i].length <= 20 words[i] consists of only English letters and symbols. 1 <= maxWidth <= 100 words[i].length <= maxWidth

Topics: Array, String, Simulation

Problem #9: Spiral Matrix

Given an m x n matrix, return all elements of the matrix in spiral order. Example 1: Input: matrix = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]] Output: [1,2,3,6,9,8,7,4,5] Example 2: Input: matrix = [[1,2,3,4],[5,6,7,8],[9,10,11,12]] Output: [1,2,3,4,8,12,11,10,9,5,6,7] Constraints: m == matrix.length n == matrix[i].length 1 <= m, n <= 10 -100 <= matrix[i][j] <= 100

Topics: Array, Matrix, Simulation

Problem #10: Step-By-Step Directions From a Binary Tree Node to Another

You are given the root of a binary tree with n nodes. Each node is uniquely assigned a value from 1 to n. You are also given an integer startValue representing the value of the start node s, and a different integer destValue representing the value of the destination node t. Find the shortest path starting from node s and ending at node t. Generate step-by-step directions of such path as a string consisting of only the uppercase letters 'L', 'R', and 'U'. Each letter indicates a specific direction: 'L' means to go from a node to its left child node. 'R' means to go from a node to its right child node. 'U' means to go from a node to its parent node. Return the step-by-step directions of the shortest path from node s to node t. Example 1: Input: root = [5,1,2,3,null,6,4], startValue = 3, destValue = 6 Output: "UURL" Explanation: The shortest path is: 3 → 1 → 5 → 2 → 6. Example 2: Input: root = [2,1], startValue = 2, destValue = 1 Output: "L" Explanation: The shortest path is: 2 → 1. Constraints: The number of nodes in the tree is n. 2 <= n <= 105 1 <= Node.val <= n All the values in the tree are unique. 1 <= startValue, destValue <= n startValue != destValue

Topics: String, Tree, Depth-First Search, Binary Tree