LeetCode 38: Count and Say Solution

Master LeetCode problem 38 (Count and Say), a medium challenge, with our optimized solutions in Java, C++, and Python. Explore detailed explanations, test your code in our interactive editor, and prepare for coding interviews.

38. Count and Say

Medium

String

Problem Explanation

Explanation

To solve this problem, we need to generate the nth element of the count-and-say sequence. The count-and-say sequence is a series of strings where each subsequent string is a "say what you see" version of the previous string. We start with "1" as the first element, and then describe the count of each digit in the previous string. For example, if we have "1211" as the third element, we would count the occurrences of each digit in the second element, which is "11", resulting in "21".

We can iterate through the sequence by starting with "1" and applying the run-length encoding process iteratively to generate subsequent elements. The key idea is to keep track of the current count of consecutive digits as we iterate through each previous element.

Time complexity: O(2^n), where n is the input parameter n.
Space complexity: O(2^n) to store each element in the sequence.

Solution Code

class Solution {
    public String countAndSay(int n) {
        if (n == 1) {
            return "1";
        }
        
        String prev = countAndSay(n - 1);
        StringBuilder result = new StringBuilder();
        int count = 1;
        
        for (int i = 0; i < prev.length(); i++) {
            if (i + 1 < prev.length() && prev.charAt(i) == prev.charAt(i + 1)) {
                count++;
            } else {
                result.append(count).append(prev.charAt(i));
                count = 1;
            }
        }
        
        return result.toString();
    }
}

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