Development Consultant

You are given two arrays, A and B, each containing N positive integers, along with two integer switch costs, X and Y.

You must construct a sequence of N choices by traversing from index 0 to N-1. At each index i, you must choose exactly one element, either A[i] or B[i]. The value of the chosen element contributes to a running total cost.

An additional "switching cost" is incurred if your choice of array at index i is different from your choice at index i-1:

Switching from array A to B (choosing A[i-1] then B[i]) costs X.

Switching from array B to A (choosing B[i-1] then A[i]) costs Y.

Staying on the same array (e.g., A[i-1] then A[i]) has no switching cost.

Your goal is to find the minimum possible total cost to traverse from index 0 to N-1. The total cost is the sum of all chosen elements plus the sum of all incurred switching penalties.

You have been given a grid containing some oranges. Each cell of this grid has one of the three integers values:

Value 0 - representing an empty cell.

Value 1 - representing a fresh orange.

Value 2 - representing a rotten orange.

Every second, any fresh orange that is adjacent(4-directionally) to a rotten orange becomes rotten.

Your task is to find out the minimum time after which no cell has a fresh orange. If it's impossible to rot all the fresh oranges then print -1.

Note:

1. The grid has 0-based indexing.
2. A rotten orange can affect the adjacent oranges 4 directionally i.e. Up, Down, Left, Right.

Given a sequence of numbers ‘ARR’. Your task is to return a sorted sequence of ‘ARR’ in non-descending order with help of the merge sort algorithm.

Example :

Merge Sort Algorithm -

Merge sort is a Divide and Conquer based Algorithm. It divides the input array into two-parts, until the size of the input array is not ‘1’. In the return part, it will merge two sorted arrays a return a whole merged sorted array.

The above illustrates shows how merge sort works.

Note :

It is compulsory to use the ‘Merge Sort’ algorithm.

There are 4 people (A, B, C, and D) who want to cross a bridge at night.

• A, B, C and D take 1, 2, 5 and 8 minutes respectively to cross the bridge.
• There is only one torch with them, and the bridge cannot be crossed without the torch.
• There cannot be more than two people on the bridge at any time, and when two people cross the bridge together, they must move at the slower person's pace.

Can they all cross the bridge in 15 minutes?

The King of a small country invites 1000 senators to his annual party. As a tradition, each senator brings the King a bottle of wine. Soon after, the Queen discovers that one of the senators is trying to assassinate the King by giving him a bottle of poisoned wine. Unfortunately, they do not know which senator, nor which bottle of wine is poisoned, and the poison is completely indiscernible. However, the King has 10 prisoners he plans to execute. He decides to use them as taste testers to determine which bottle of wine contains the poison. The poison when taken has no effect on the prisoner until exactly 24 hours later when the infected prisoner suddenly dies. The King needs to determine which bottle of wine is poisoned by tomorrow so that the festivities can continue as planned. Hence he only has time for one round of testing. How can the King administer the wine to the prisoners to ensure that 24 hours from now he is guaranteed to have found the poisoned wine bottle?