solution: reverse a string - word by word
problem: reverse "the house is blue", the answer should be "blue is
house the". the words are reversed, but the letters are still in order
(within the word).
solution: solving the initial problem of just reversing a string can either
be a huge help or a frustrating hinderance. most likely the first attempt
will be to solve it the same way, by swapping letters at the front of the
string with letters at the back, and then adding some logic to keep the
words in order. this attempt will lead to confusion pretty quickly.
for example, if we start by figuring out that "the" is 3 letters long and
then try to put the "t" from "the" where the "l" from "blue" is, we
encounter a problem. where do we put the "l" from "blue"? hmm... well
we could have also figured out how long "blue" was and that would tell
us where to put the "l" at... but the "e" from "blue" needs to go into the
space after "the". argh. its getting quite confusing. in fact, i would be
delighted to even see a solution to this problem using this attack
method. i don't think its impossible, but i think it is so complex that it's
not worth pursuing.
here's a hint. remember before when we just reversed "the house is
blue"? what happened?
initial: the house is blue
reverse: eulb si esuoh eht
look at the result for a minute. notice anything? if you still don't see it,
try this.
initial: the house is blue
reverse: eulb si esuoh eht
wanted : blue is house the
the solution can be attained by first reversing the string normally, and
then just reversing each word
100 doors in a rowaha:!
problem: you have 100 doors in a row that are all initially closed. you
make 100 passes by the doors starting with the first door every time.
the first time through you visit every door and toggle the door (if the
door is closed, you open it, if its open, you close it). the second time
you only visit every 2nd door (door #2, #4, #6). the third time, every
3rd door (door #3, #6, #9), etc, until you only visit the 100th door.
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