How should I practice Can Place Flowers?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Agoda phone screen problems in FastPrep.

Is Can Place Flowers associated with Agoda?

FastPrep tags this as a Agoda phone screen coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Can Place Flowers

Agoda● EasyFULLTIMEPHONE SCREEN

Problem statement

A flowerbed is a row of plots. You are given an integer array flowerbed, where flowerbed[i] = 1 means plot i already has a flower and flowerbed[i] = 0 means it is empty. You are also given an integer n.

Flowers cannot grow in adjacent plots. A new flower can go only in an empty plot whose left and right neighbors are both empty. The first and last plots have only one neighbor; the side outside the row counts as empty.

Return true if you can plant n new flowers without breaking this rule, and false otherwise. Flowers that are already planted cannot be moved.

Function

canPlaceFlowers(flowerbed: int[], n: int) → boolean

Examples

Example 1

flowerbed = [1,0,0,0,0,1]n = 1return = true

Plot 1 cannot be used because plot 0 has a flower, and plot 4 cannot be used because plot 5 has a flower. Plots 2 and 3 both have empty neighbors, so one flower fits in either of them.

One new flower is enough, so the answer is true.

Example 2

flowerbed = [1,0,0,0,0,1]n = 2return = false

This is the same flowerbed. Only plots 2 and 3 can take a flower, and they are next to each other, so planting in one blocks the other. At most one new flower fits.

Two are needed, so the answer is false.

Example 3

flowerbed = [0,0,1,0,0]n = 2return = true

Plot 0 is at the edge: its only neighbor, plot 1, is empty, so it can take a flower. Plot 4 is at the other edge with an empty neighbor, plot 3, so it can take one too. Plots 1 and 3 are next to the flower in plot 2.

Planting in plots 0 and 4 gives two new flowers, so the answer is true.

Constraints

1 <= flowerbed.length <= 2 * 10^4
flowerbed[i] is 0 or 1.
No two adjacent plots in flowerbed both have a flower.
0 <= n <= flowerbed.length