Introduction

In this blog post, we'll share the most commonly asked coding interview questions at Zoho. 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 #1: Decode String

Given an encoded string, return its decoded string. The encoding rule is: k[encoded_string], where the encoded_string inside the square brackets is being repeated exactly k times. Note that k is guaranteed to be a positive integer. You may assume that the input string is always valid; there are no extra white spaces, square brackets are well-formed, etc. Furthermore, you may assume that the original data does not contain any digits and that digits are only for those repeat numbers, k. For example, there will not be input like 3a or 2[4]. The test cases are generated so that the length of the output will never exceed 105. Example 1: Input: s = "3[a]2[bc]" Output: "aaabcbc" Example 2: Input: s = "3[a2[c]]" Output: "accaccacc" Example 3: Input: s = "2[abc]3[cd]ef" Output: "abcabccdcdcdef" Constraints: 1 <= s.length <= 30 s consists of lowercase English letters, digits, and square brackets '[]'. s is guaranteed to be a valid input. All the integers in s are in the range [1, 300].

Topics: String, Stack, Recursion

Problem #2: Longest Substring Without Repeating Characters

Given a string s, find the length of the longest substring without duplicate characters. Example 1: Input: s = "abcabcbb" Output: 3 Explanation: The answer is "abc", with the length of 3. Example 2: Input: s = "bbbbb" Output: 1 Explanation: The answer is "b", with the length of 1. Example 3: Input: s = "pwwkew" Output: 3 Explanation: The answer is "wke", with the length of 3. Notice that the answer must be a substring, "pwke" is a subsequence and not a substring. Constraints: 0 <= s.length <= 5 * 104 s consists of English letters, digits, symbols and spaces.

Topics: Hash Table, String, Sliding Window

Problem #3: Number of Islands

Given an m x n 2D binary grid grid which represents a map of '1's (land) and '0's (water), return the number of islands. An island is surrounded by water and is formed by connecting adjacent lands horizontally or vertically. You may assume all four edges of the grid are all surrounded by water. Example 1: Input: grid = [ ["1","1","1","1","0"], ["1","1","0","1","0"], ["1","1","0","0","0"], ["0","0","0","0","0"] ] Output: 1 Example 2: Input: grid = [ ["1","1","0","0","0"], ["1","1","0","0","0"], ["0","0","1","0","0"], ["0","0","0","1","1"] ] Output: 3 Constraints: m == grid.length n == grid[i].length 1 <= m, n <= 300 grid[i][j] is '0' or '1'.

Topics: Array, Depth-First Search, Breadth-First Search, Union Find, Matrix

Problem #4: Merge Intervals

Given an array of intervals where intervals[i] = [starti, endi], merge all overlapping intervals, and return an array of the non-overlapping intervals that cover all the intervals in the input. Example 1: Input: intervals = [[1,3],[2,6],[8,10],[15,18]] Output: [[1,6],[8,10],[15,18]] Explanation: Since intervals [1,3] and [2,6] overlap, merge them into [1,6]. Example 2: Input: intervals = [[1,4],[4,5]] Output: [[1,5]] Explanation: Intervals [1,4] and [4,5] are considered overlapping. Constraints: 1 <= intervals.length <= 104 intervals[i].length == 2 0 <= starti <= endi <= 104

Topics: Array, Sorting

Problem #5: Largest Number

Given a list of non-negative integers nums, arrange them such that they form the largest number and return it. Since the result may be very large, so you need to return a string instead of an integer. Example 1: Input: nums = [10,2] Output: "210" Example 2: Input: nums = [3,30,34,5,9] Output: "9534330" Constraints: 1 <= nums.length <= 100 0 <= nums[i] <= 109

Topics: Array, String, Greedy, Sorting

Problem #6: Multiply Strings

Given two non-negative integers num1 and num2 represented as strings, return the product of num1 and num2, also represented as a string. Note: You must not use any built-in BigInteger library or convert the inputs to integer directly. Example 1: Input: num1 = "2", num2 = "3" Output: "6" Example 2: Input: num1 = "123", num2 = "456" Output: "56088" Constraints: 1 <= num1.length, num2.length <= 200 num1 and num2 consist of digits only. Both num1 and num2 do not contain any leading zero, except the number 0 itself.

Topics: Math, String, Simulation

Problem #7: Group Anagrams

Given an array of strings strs, group the anagrams together. You can return the answer in any order. Example 1: Input: strs = ["eat","tea","tan","ate","nat","bat"] Output: [["bat"],["nat","tan"],["ate","eat","tea"]] Explanation: There is no string in strs that can be rearranged to form "bat". The strings "nat" and "tan" are anagrams as they can be rearranged to form each other. The strings "ate", "eat", and "tea" are anagrams as they can be rearranged to form each other. Example 2: Input: strs = [""] Output: [[""]] Example 3: Input: strs = ["a"] Output: [["a"]] Constraints: 1 <= strs.length <= 104 0 <= strs[i].length <= 100 strs[i] consists of lowercase English letters.

Topics: Array, Hash Table, String, Sorting

Problem #8: Buddy Strings

Given two strings s and goal, return true if you can swap two letters in s so the result is equal to goal, otherwise, return false. Swapping letters is defined as taking two indices i and j (0-indexed) such that i != j and swapping the characters at s[i] and s[j]. For example, swapping at indices 0 and 2 in "abcd" results in "cbad". Example 1: Input: s = "ab", goal = "ba" Output: true Explanation: You can swap s[0] = 'a' and s[1] = 'b' to get "ba", which is equal to goal. Example 2: Input: s = "ab", goal = "ab" Output: false Explanation: The only letters you can swap are s[0] = 'a' and s[1] = 'b', which results in "ba" != goal. Example 3: Input: s = "aa", goal = "aa" Output: true Explanation: You can swap s[0] = 'a' and s[1] = 'a' to get "aa", which is equal to goal. Constraints: 1 <= s.length, goal.length <= 2 * 104 s and goal consist of lowercase letters.

Topics: Hash Table, String

Problem #9: Rotate Image

You are given an n x n 2D matrix representing an image, rotate the image by 90 degrees (clockwise). You have to rotate the image in-place, which means you have to modify the input 2D matrix directly. DO NOT allocate another 2D matrix and do the rotation. Example 1: Input: matrix = [[1,2,3],[4,5,6],[7,8,9]] Output: [[7,4,1],[8,5,2],[9,6,3]] Example 2: Input: matrix = [[5,1,9,11],[2,4,8,10],[13,3,6,7],[15,14,12,16]] Output: [[15,13,2,5],[14,3,4,1],[12,6,8,9],[16,7,10,11]] Constraints: n == matrix.length == matrix[i].length 1 <= n <= 20 -1000 <= matrix[i][j] <= 1000

Topics: Array, Math, Matrix

Problem #10: Dungeon Game

The demons had captured the princess and imprisoned her in the bottom-right corner of a dungeon. The dungeon consists of m x n rooms laid out in a 2D grid. Our valiant knight was initially positioned in the top-left room and must fight his way through dungeon to rescue the princess. The knight has an initial health point represented by a positive integer. If at any point his health point drops to 0 or below, he dies immediately. Some of the rooms are guarded by demons (represented by negative integers), so the knight loses health upon entering these rooms; other rooms are either empty (represented as 0) or contain magic orbs that increase the knight's health (represented by positive integers). To reach the princess as quickly as possible, the knight decides to move only rightward or downward in each step. Return the knight's minimum initial health so that he can rescue the princess. Note that any room can contain threats or power-ups, even the first room the knight enters and the bottom-right room where the princess is imprisoned. Example 1: Input: dungeon = [[-2,-3,3],[-5,-10,1],[10,30,-5]] Output: 7 Explanation: The initial health of the knight must be at least 7 if he follows the optimal path: RIGHT-> RIGHT -> DOWN -> DOWN. Example 2: Input: dungeon = [[0]] Output: 1 Constraints: m == dungeon.length n == dungeon[i].length 1 <= m, n <= 200 -1000 <= dungeon[i][j] <= 1000

Topics: Array, Dynamic Programming, Matrix