Introduction

In this blog post, we'll share the most commonly asked coding interview questions at EPAM Systems. 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: 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 #2: Two Sum

Given an array of integers nums and an integer target, return indices of the two numbers such that they add up to target. You may assume that each input would have exactly one solution, and you may not use the same element twice. You can return the answer in any order. Example 1: Input: nums = [2,7,11,15], target = 9 Output: [0,1] Explanation: Because nums[0] + nums[1] == 9, we return [0, 1]. Example 2: Input: nums = [3,2,4], target = 6 Output: [1,2] Example 3: Input: nums = [3,3], target = 6 Output: [0,1] Constraints: 2 <= nums.length <= 104 -109 <= nums[i] <= 109 -109 <= target <= 109 Only one valid answer exists. Follow-up: Can you come up with an algorithm that is less than O(n2) time complexity?

Topics: Array, Hash Table

Problem #3: Longest Common Prefix

Write a function to find the longest common prefix string amongst an array of strings. If there is no common prefix, return an empty string "". Example 1: Input: strs = ["flower","flow","flight"] Output: "fl" Example 2: Input: strs = ["dog","racecar","car"] Output: "" Explanation: There is no common prefix among the input strings. Constraints: 1 <= strs.length <= 200 0 <= strs[i].length <= 200 strs[i] consists of only lowercase English letters if it is non-empty.

Topics: String, Trie

Problem #4: String Compression

Given an array of characters chars, compress it using the following algorithm: Begin with an empty string s. For each group of consecutive repeating characters in chars: If the group's length is 1, append the character to s. Otherwise, append the character followed by the group's length. The compressed string s should not be returned separately, but instead, be stored in the input character array chars. Note that group lengths that are 10 or longer will be split into multiple characters in chars. After you are done modifying the input array, return the new length of the array. You must write an algorithm that uses only constant extra space. Example 1: Input: chars = ["a","a","b","b","c","c","c"] Output: Return 6, and the first 6 characters of the input array should be: ["a","2","b","2","c","3"] Explanation: The groups are "aa", "bb", and "ccc". This compresses to "a2b2c3". Example 2: Input: chars = ["a"] Output: Return 1, and the first character of the input array should be: ["a"] Explanation: The only group is "a", which remains uncompressed since it's a single character. Example 3: Input: chars = ["a","b","b","b","b","b","b","b","b","b","b","b","b"] Output: Return 4, and the first 4 characters of the input array should be: ["a","b","1","2"]. Explanation: The groups are "a" and "bbbbbbbbbbbb". This compresses to "ab12". Constraints: 1 <= chars.length <= 2000 chars[i] is a lowercase English letter, uppercase English letter, digit, or symbol.

Topics: Two Pointers, String

Problem #5: Maximum Difference Between Node and Ancestor

Given the root of a binary tree, find the maximum value v for which there exist different nodes a and b where v = |a.val - b.val| and a is an ancestor of b. A node a is an ancestor of b if either: any child of a is equal to b or any child of a is an ancestor of b. Example 1: Input: root = [8,3,10,1,6,null,14,null,null,4,7,13] Output: 7 Explanation: We have various ancestor-node differences, some of which are given below : |8 - 3| = 5 |3 - 7| = 4 |8 - 1| = 7 |10 - 13| = 3 Among all possible differences, the maximum value of 7 is obtained by |8 - 1| = 7. Example 2: Input: root = [1,null,2,null,0,3] Output: 3 Constraints: The number of nodes in the tree is in the range [2, 5000]. 0 <= Node.val <= 105

Topics: Tree, Depth-First Search, Binary Tree

Problem #6: Longest Palindromic Substring

Given a string s, return the longest palindromic substring in s. Example 1: Input: s = "babad" Output: "bab" Explanation: "aba" is also a valid answer. Example 2: Input: s = "cbbd" Output: "bb" Constraints: 1 <= s.length <= 1000 s consist of only digits and English letters.

Topics: Two Pointers, String, Dynamic Programming

Problem #7: Valid Parentheses

Given a string s containing just the characters '(', ')', '{', '}', '[' and ']', determine if the input string is valid. An input string is valid if: Open brackets must be closed by the same type of brackets. Open brackets must be closed in the correct order. Every close bracket has a corresponding open bracket of the same type. Example 1: Input: s = "()" Output: true Example 2: Input: s = "()[]{}" Output: true Example 3: Input: s = "(]" Output: false Example 4: Input: s = "([])" Output: true Constraints: 1 <= s.length <= 104 s consists of parentheses only '()[]{}'.

Topics: String, Stack