TopcoderArchive
Archive30 Jul 2007
TCCC07 Round 1B

MutateTree

Problem statement, definition, constraints, and public examples.

Problem Statement

A 2-tree is a tree in which each vertex either has exactly 2 non-empty children (its left and right child), or is a leaf (has no children). Each leaf is named with an uppercase letter, and each other vertex is named with a lowercase letter.

We want to mutate a given 2-tree by swapping the locations of two of its subtrees. For example, below is shown a 2-tree and then its mutation when its subtrees rooted at C and x are swapped.

      q                      q
  x       z        ==>    C       z
 A B    C   g                   x    g
           R Q                 A B  R Q

Each 2-tree can be represented by a string consisting of the names of its vertices in the order given by a post-order traversal of the tree (see notes). Given tree, the representation of a 2-tree, and the 0-based indices of two of its vertices, return the representation of the mutated tree. If the two subtrees have any vertices in common return the 7-character string "OVERLAP". If tree is not the representation of any 2-tree, return "BADTREE".

Definition

Class:
MutateTree
Method:
newTree
Parameters:
String, int, int
Returns:
String
Method signature:
String newTree(String tree, int root1, int root2)
(be sure your method is public)

Notes

  • A post-order print of a 2-tree rooted at root is defined recursively as follows:if root is not a leaf post-order print the left subtree post-order print the right subtreeprint the root's letter.

Constraints

  • tree will contain between 1 and 50 characters, inclusive.
  • Each character in tree will be a letter ('A'-'Z','a'-'z').
  • The characters in tree will be distinct.
  • root1 and root2 will each be between 0 and n-1, inclusive, where n is the number of characters in tree.

Examples

  1. "ABxCRQgzq"
    3
    2
    Returns: "CABxRQgzq"
    This is the example above, in which the subtrees rooted at C and x are swapped.
  2. "rAB"
    1
    2
    Returns: "BADTREE"
    The post-order print of every (non-empty) 2-tree starts with a leaf.
  3. "ABxCRQgzq"
    3
    7
    Returns: "OVERLAP"
    This is the tree shown in the problem. The two indicated subtrees are the ones rooted at C and at z. They overlap since vertex C is in both of them.
  4. "CEGHfdbIa"
    3
    2
    Returns: "CEHGfdbIa"
  5. "X"
    0
    0
    Returns: "OVERLAP"
    This tree is a legal 2-tree containing only one leaf. The subtrees are the entire tree -- they overlap.
  6. "IPDqWmSbEa"
    9
    1
    Returns: "BADTREE"
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