FixPalindrome | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

A palindrome is a string that reads the same forwards and in reverse. So, "EYE" and "RADAR" are palindromes, but "CAT" and "COBOL" are not.

Given a String s, return the minimum number of letters that would need to be changed in order to make the string into a palindrome.

Definition

Class:: FixPalindrome
Method:: fewestChanges
Parameters:: String
Returns:: int
Method signature:: int fewestChanges(String s)
(be sure your method is public)

Constraints

s will contain between 1 and 50 characters, inclusive.
Each character of s will be a capital letter ('A'-'Z').

Examples

```
"RADAR"
```
```
Returns: 0
```
From the problem statement. This is already a palindrome, so no changes are needed.
```
"COBOL"
```
```
Returns: 1
```
Also from the problem statement. If we change the final 'L' to a 'C', then we would have a palindrome, so one change is all that is needed.

"ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYXWVUTSRQPONMLKJIHGFEDCBA"

Returns: 0

A long string, but it's good already.

```
"APPIRIO"
```
```
Returns: 3
```

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