How should I practice Minimum Moves?

Start by reading the full statement, solve the visible examples, then compare the pattern against related Goldman Sachs online assessment problems in FastPrep.

Is Minimum Moves associated with Goldman Sachs?

FastPrep tags this as a Goldman Sachs online assessment coding practice problem when the problem catalog has that company and stage context.

Problem · Matrix

Minimum Moves

Learn this problem

● Medium

Goldman SachsINTERNOA

Problem statement

There is a maze in HackerPlay where children play for recreation.

The maze is represented as an n x m grid of cells, where each cell is either empty (denoted by 0), or contains an obstacle (denoted by 1). HackerMan is currently standing at cell (0, 0), and wishes to reach the cell (n - 1, m - 1).

For a jump parameter denoted by k, in one move, HackerMan can move to any of the following cells:

(i + k, j) where 1 ≤ k ≤ n provided cell (i + k, j) lies in the maze and there are no cells containing obstacles in the range (i + 1, j) to (i + k, j).
(i, j + k) where 1 ≤ k ≤ m provided cell (i, j + k) lies in the maze and there are no cells containing obstacles in the range (i, j + 1) to (i, j + k).
(i - k, j) where 1 ≤ k ≤ n provided cell (i - k, j) lies in the maze and there are no cells containing obstacles in the range (i - 1, j) to (i - k, j).
(i, j - k) where 1 ≤ k ≤ m provided cell (i, j - k) lies in the maze and there are no cells containing obstacles in the range (i, j - 1) to (i, j - k).

Determine the minimum number of moves in which HackerMan can reach the cell (n - 1, m - 1) starting from (0, 0), or -1 if it is impossible to reach that cell.

Function

getMinimumMoves(maze: int[][], k: int) → int

Complete the function getMinimumMoves in the editor.

getMinimumMoves has the following parameters:

int maze[n][m]: the maze in HackerPlay where HackerMan is standing
int k: the maximum distance HackerMan can traverse in one move

Returns

int: the minimum number of moves in which HackerMan can reach the destination cell (n - 1, m - 1)

Examples

Example 1

maze = [[0, 1], [1, 0]]k = 2return = 2

The maze looks like this.

[[0, 0], [1, 0]]

The following sequence of moves can be performed: (0, 0) to (0, 1) to (1, 1). Hence, HackerMan can reach the end in 2 moves, which is minimum possible. The answer is 2.

Example 2

maze = [[0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0]]k = 5return = 2

The maze can be represented as:

[[0, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0]]

The following sequence of moves can be performed: (0, 0) to (0, 2) to (1, 2).

Example 3

maze = [[0, 1, 0], [1, 0, 0], [1, 0, 0]]k = 5return = -1

The maze can be represented as:

[[0, 1, 0], [1, 1, 0], [1, 0, 0]]

HackerMan is blocked and cannot move from the cell (0, 0).

Constraints

1 ≤ n, m ≤ 100

1 ≤ k ≤ 100

Each cell of the grid contains values either 0 or 1.