How to communicate common Data Structure through text!

Reminder to be efficent!

Arrays, Trees, and more!

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Why?

In coding interviews, it’s good practice to show in the coderpad what you mean. However, when diagraming complex structures like trees in common to lack proficiency with the text editors. Here are some reminders!

Arrays

arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

So a common array? How can we use this to explain our solution! Common algorithms we do on arrays include the indices like two pointers or traversing a list. Lets label the indices!

#      0  1  2  3  4
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]

How do we do two pointers? Same idea, just have i and j or left and right pointer on separate lines!

#      0  1  2  3  4
arr = [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
#      i
#                  j

LinkedList

See this?

# [1] -> [2] -> [3] -> None

Don’t. Do this.

# 1 2 3

Reminder to tell your interview that this is in fact a LinkedList.

Strings

Same idea with Arrays!

#    12345
s = "abcde"
#    i
#        j

Matrices:

This takes too long!

'''
[[1,0,0,0,0],
 [1,1,1,1,1],
 [1,0,0,0,0]]
 
Just do this.
 
10000
11111
10000
 
Need to label the start and end?
S and E.
S0000
11111
1000E
 
Mark common paths algos with x!
 
x0000
xxxxx
1000x
 
Wanna be fancy with BFS?
Use numbers to show the order!
 
S1234
12345
23456
'''

Trees

On my meta interview, I remember putting a lot of effort making a cool looking tree… probably wasn’t worth the effort..

'''
        A
       / \
      B   C
     / \   \
    D   E   F
   /   / \   \
  G   H   I   J
 
This is better.
 
    A  
   B C  
  D E F  
 G H I J  
 
This is the best
	A
   B
  D E
 
You only need to explain the base case (what happens if we hit a leaf)
and a recursive case (Where there are children!)
 
'''

See ya, —Brody