SDE - 1

You have been given a square chessboard of size ‘N x N’. The position coordinates of the Knight and the position coordinates of the target are also given.

Your task is to find out the minimum steps a Knight will take to reach the target position.

Example:

knightPosition: {3,4}
targetPosition: {2,1}

The knight can move from position (3,4) to positions (1,3), (2,2) and (4,2). Position (4,2) is selected and the ‘stepCount’ becomes 1. From position (4,2), the knight can directly jump to the position (2,1) which is the target point and ‘stepCount’ becomes 2 which is the final answer. 

Note:

1. The coordinates are 1 indexed. So, the bottom left square is (1,1) and the top right square is (N, N).

2. The knight can make 8 possible moves as given in figure 1.

3. A Knight moves 2 squares in one direction and 1 square in the perpendicular direction (or vice-versa).

You are Harshad Mehta’s friend. He told you the price of a particular stock for the next ‘n’ days.

You are given an array ‘prices’ which such that ‘prices[i]’ denotes the price of the stock on the ith day.

You don't want to do more than 2 transactions. Find the maximum profit that you can earn from these transactions.

Note

1. Buying a stock and then selling it is called one transaction.

2. You are not allowed to do multiple transactions at the same time. This means you have to sell the stock before buying it again. 

Example:

Input: ‘n’ = 7, ‘prices’ = [3, 3, 5, 0, 3, 1, 4].

Output: 6

Explanation: 
The maximum profit can be earned by:
Transaction 1: Buying the stock on day 4 (price 0) and then selling it on day 5 (price 3). 
Transaction 2: Buying the stock on day 6 (price 1) and then selling it on day 6 (price 4).
Total profit earned will be (3 - 0) + ( 4 - 1) = 6. 

Who is your role model?

What are your expectations?