Question

There is a forum that has a limit of K characters per entry. In this task your job is to implement an algorithm for cropping messages that are too long. You are given a message, consisting of English alphabet letters and spaces, that might be longer than the limit. Your algorithm should crop a number of words from the end of the message, keeping in mind that: • it may not crop away part of a word; • the output message may not end with a space; • the output message may not exceed the K-character limit; the output message should be as long as possible. This means that, in some cases, the algorithm may need to crop away the entire message, outputting an empty string. For example, given the text: "Codility We test coders" With K = 14 the algorithm should output: "Codility We" Note that: • the output "Codility We te" would be incorrect, because the original message is cropped through the middle of a word; the output "Codility We would be incorrect, because it ends with a space; the output "Codility We test coders" would be incorrect, because it exceeds the K-character limit; the output "Codility' would be incorrect, because it is shorter than the correct output.
Write a function class Solution { public String solution(String message, int k); } which, given a message and an integer K, returns the message cropped to no more than K characters, as described above. Examples: 1. Given message = "Codility We test coders' and K = 14, the function should return "Codility We". 2. Given message = "Why not" and K = 100, the function should return "Why not". 3. Given message = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and K = 39, the function should return "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy". Assume that: • K is an integer within the range [1..500]; • message is a non-empty string containing at most 500 English alphabet letters and spaces. There are no spaces at the beginning or at the end of message; also there can't be two or more consecutive spaces in message.

Answer 1

Source Code:

def solution(message, k):
    # if k >= len(message) then return original message
    if k >= len(message):
        return message
    # splice the message till length k
    spliced = message[:k]

    # now if in the original message
    # character at index k is a space
    # and the previous character
    # is a alphanumeric then
    # the cut is at perfect place
    # no need to do anything

    if message[k] == ' ' and message[k - 1] != ' ':
        # return spliced
        return spliced
  
    # remove characters until spaces is read
    while len(spliced) > 0 and spliced[-1] != ' ':
        # remove last character
        spliced = spliced[:-1]
  
    # remove all spaces
    while len(spliced) > 0 and spliced[-1] == ' ':
        # remove last character
        spliced = spliced[:-1]
  

    # return the result
    return spliced

### main script for testing
message = "Codality We test coders"
print(solution(message, 14))

message = "Why not"
print(solution(message, 100))

message = "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog"
print(solution(message, 39))

Sample Output:

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