Tag Archives: 2 Keys Keyboard

2 Keys Keyboard

Posted on by
Reply

Initially on a notepad only one character ‘A’ is present. You can perform two operations on this notepad for each step:

  1. Copy All: You can copy all the characters present on the notepad (partial copy is not allowed).
  2. Paste: You can paste the characters which are copied last time.

Given a number n. You have to get exactly n ‘A’ on the notepad by performing the minimum number of steps permitted. Output the minimum number of steps to get n ‘A’.

Example 1:

Input: 3
Output: 3
Explanation:
Intitally, we have one character 'A'.
In step 1, we use Copy All operation.
In step 2, we use Paste operation to get 'AA'.
In step 3, we use Paste operation to get 'AAA'.

Note:

  1. The n will be in the range [1, 1000].
from functools import lru_cache

class Solution:
    def minSteps(self, n: int) -> int:
        
#         @lru_cache(None)
#         def operation(notepad, current):
#         def operation(notepad, current):
#             if len(current) <= n:
#                 if len(current) == n:
#                     return 0

#                 # no notepad
#                 t1 = (operation(current, current) if not notepad else 0x7777777) + 1

#                 # paste from notepad
#                 t2 = (operation(notepad, current + notepad) if notepad else 0x7777777) + 1

#                 # update notepad
#                 t3 = (operation(current, current) if notepad and notepad != current else 0x7777777) + 1

#                 return min(t1, t2, t3)

#             else:
#                 return 0x7777777

#         result = operation(0, "A")

#         return result

        if n == 1: 
            return 0
        
        for i in range(2,n+1):
            if n % i == 0: 
                return i + self.minSteps(int(n/i))