PalinBox | Topcoder Archive

Problem Statement

You will be given a rectangular box of letters as a String[] (each element is a row). We want to change box so that every column and every row is a palindrome. That is, reading a row left-to-right is the same as right-to-left and reading a column top-to-bottom is the same as bottom-to-top. Return the fewest number of cells in box that need to be changed to achieve this effect.

Definition

Class:: PalinBox
Method:: getMin
Parameters:: String[]
Returns:: int
Method signature:: int getMin(String[] box)
(be sure your method is public)

Notes

box will contain between 2 and 50 elements, inclusive.
Each element of box will contain between 2 and 50 characters, inclusive.
Each character in box will be a capital letter ('A'-'Z').
Each element of box will contain the same number of characters.

Constraints

Examples

```
{
"ABA",
"BAB",
"ABA"
}
```
```
Returns: 0
```
No changes needed.
```
{
"AB",
"CD"
}
```
```
Returns: 3
```
We can solve this one by making every cell 'A'.
```
{
"ABC",
"DEF",
"GHI"
}
```
```
Returns: 5
```
We can change the input to the following box: { "ABA", "DED", "ABA" }

{
"ABCD",
"EFGH",
"IJKL",
"MNOP"
}

Returns: 12

{
"ZFF",
"YYS",
"VSH",
"CXT",
"WVR",
"TPO",
"BPR",
"VQM",
"IXV",
"KMN"
}

Returns: 19

The input need not be square.

```
{"BBE", "EAE", "FCD"}
```
```
Returns: 4
```

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