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LeetCode: 1436-Destination City Solution

Last Updated on 2023-12-15 by Clay

Problem

You are given the array paths, where paths[i] = [cityAi, cityBi] means there exists a direct path going from cityAi to cityBiReturn the destination city, that is, the city without any path outgoing to another city.

It is guaranteed that the graph of paths forms a line without any loop, therefore, there will be exactly one destination city.

Example 1:Input: paths = [["London","New York"],["New York","Lima"],["Lima","Sao Paulo"]] Output: "Sao Paulo" Explanation: Starting at "London" city you will reach "Sao Paulo" city which is the destination city. Your trip consist of: "London" -> "New York" -> "Lima" -> "Sao Paulo".

Example 2:Input: paths = [["B","C"],["D","B"],["C","A"]] Output: "A" Explanation: All possible trips are:  "D" -> "B" -> "C" -> "A".  "B" -> "C" -> "A".  "C" -> "A".  "A".  Clearly the destination city is "A".

Example 3:Input: paths = [["A","Z"]] Output: "Z"

Constraints:

  • 1 <= paths.length <= 100
  • paths[i].length == 2
  • 1 <= cityAi.length, cityBi.length <= 10
  • cityAi != cityBi
  • All strings consist of lowercase and uppercase English letters and the space character.

Every city have a unidirectional connection, and the path of connection would walk only one time. So we can find the destination city.


Solution

I used a dictionary to store the city states. If city A is departure, A += 1; If city A is destination, A -= 1.

Finally, we had found the destination city state is -1. Of course you can use SET instead of dictionary.


C++ Sample Code

class Solution {
public:
    string destCity(vector<vector<string>>& paths) {
        // Init
        unordered_map<string, int> counter;

        // Count
        for (vector<string>& path: paths) {
            ++counter[path[0]];
            --counter[path[1]];
        }

        // Get the destination
        for (auto& it: counter) {
            if (it.second == -1) {
                return it.first;
            }
        }

        return "";
    }
};



Python Sample Code

class Solution:
    def destCity(self, paths: List[List[str]]) -> str:
        # Init
        counter = {}

        # Count
        for path in paths:
            counter[path[0]] = counter.get(path[0], 0) + 1
            counter[path[1]] = counter.get(path[1], 0) - 1

        # Find the destination
        for city in counter:
            if counter[city] == -1:
                return city

References


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