Question

Problem 1 (Ransom Note Problem) in python

A kidnapper kidnaps you and writes a ransom note. He does not write it by hand to avoid having his hand writing being recognized, so he uses a magazine to create a ransom note. We need to find out, given the ransom string and magazine string, is it possible to create a given ransom note. The kidnapper can use individual characters of words.

Here is how your program should work to simulate the ransom problem:

• your program should prompt the user to enter a long String to represent the magazine and another short String to represent the required ransom note.
• your program needs to check if the magazine string contains all required characters in equal or greater number present in the ransom note.
• your program should print true if it is possible to create the given ransom note from the given magazine, and print false otherwise.
• Break up your code into a set of well-defined functions. Each function should include a comment block that briefly describes it, its parameters and any return values. 


Example: If the magazine string is “programming problems are weird”

If the ransom note is: “no see” your program should print true as all the characters in “no see” exist in the magazine string.

If the ransom note is “no show” your program should print false as not all the characters in “no show” exist in the magazine string as you can see the character ‘h’ does not exist.

Answer 1

Program

def ransom_note(magazine, ransom):
    hash_words = {}

    # Create the hash tabled with the words on the
    # magazine and put the number of occurrence in the value.
    for m_word in magazine:
        if hash_words.get(m_word) != None:
            if (hash_words[m_word] > 0):
                hash_words[m_word] += 1
        else:
            hash_words[m_word] = 1

    # Check if exist the word in the hash table
    for r_word in ransom:
        if hash_words.get(r_word) is None or hash_words[r_word] == 0:
            return False
        else:
            hash_words[r_word] -= 1

    return True

m = "programming problems are weird"
n = "are"
magazine_list = m.split(' ')
ransom_list = n.split(' ')
answer = ransom_note(magazine_list, ransom_list)

if answer:
    print ("True")
else:
    print ("False")

Output

True

Screenshot