Last Updated: 24 Sep, 2020
Rat In a Maze All Paths
Moderate
Asked in companies
You are given a 'N' * 'N' maze with a rat placed at 'MAZE[0][0]'. Find and print all paths that rat can follow to reach its destination i.e. 'MAZE['N' - 1]['N' - 1]'. Rat can move in any direction ( left, right, up and down).
Value of every cell in the 'MAZE' can either be 0 or 1. Cells with value 0 are blocked means the rat cannot enter into those cells and those with value 1 are open.
Input Format:
The first line of input contains an integer 'N' representing the dimension of the maze.
The next 'N' lines of input contain 'N' space-separated integers representing the type of the cell.
Output Format :
For each test case, return the path from the start position to the destination position and only cells that are part of the solution path should be 1, rest all cells should be 0.
Output for every test case will be printed in a separate line.
Note:
You do not need to print anything, it has already been taken care of. Just implement the given function.
Constraints:
1 <= N <= 10
0 <= MAZE[i][j] <=1
Where 'MAZE[i][j]' denotes the value in the cell of 'MAZE'.
Time Limit: 1 sec
Approaches
Initialize, all the cells of the solution matrix used to print the path matrix to 0. First, you cannot make use of the existing maze to print the solution maze as you have to distinguish b/w 1 of maze or 1 of ‘SOLUTION matrix.
Form a recursive function, which will follow a path and check if the path reaches the destination or not. If the path does not reach the destination then backtrack and try other paths. But in case it reaches the destination print the current ‘SOLUTION’ matrix.
The steps are as follows:
f('i', ‘j'):
- If rat reaches the destination, print the solution matrix.
- Else:
- If not valid('MAZE[i][j]' ) return
- Else ‘SOLUTION[i][j]' =1
- f(i-1,j) ; f(i+1,j) , f(i, j-1) , f(i,j+1) // Recursive calls
- ‘SOLUTION[i][j]' = 0 // Backtracking