My Solution to the Alphabet Soup Problem for Facebook Hacker Cup 2012

Just like last year, this year I signed up for Facebook Hacker Cup.

The qualification round just ended. Since I was busy in the weekend (it was Chinese New Year), I didn't have the chance to look into the problems until Monday, 2 hours before the round ended.

In a panic, I just picked one of the problems and tried to solve it.

I choose the Alphabet Soup for no particular reason. OK, maybe because it has a character named Alfredo Spaghetti, and because I love both Alfredo sauce and Spaghetti in general.

Here's how I solved it in Python.

file = open("alphabet_soup.txt")

number_of_lines = int(file.readline())

line = 0

print ''

while line < number_of_lines :

    line = line + 1

    test_case = file.readline()

    chars = {}

        for character in test_case:

        if character != ' ':

            if chars.has_key(character):

                chars[character] = chars[character] + 1

            else:

                chars[character] = 1

           

    h = chars['H'] if chars.has_key('H') else 0

    a = chars['A'] if chars.has_key('A') else 0

    c = chars['C'] if chars.has_key('C') else 0

    k = chars['K'] if chars.has_key('K') else 0

    e = chars['E'] if chars.has_key('E') else 0

    r = chars['R'] if chars.has_key('R') else 0

    u = chars['U'] if chars.has_key('U') else 0

    p = chars['P'] if chars.has_key('P') else 0

    i = 0

    can_continue = True

    while can_continue :

        h = h-1

        a = a-1

        c = c-2

        k = k-1

        e = e-1

        r = r-1

        u = u-1

        p = p-1

        if h >=0 and a >=0 and c >=0 and k >=0 and e >=0 and r >=0 and u >=0 and p >=0 :

            i = i + 1

        else:

            can_continue = False

    print 'Case #%s: %s' % (line, i)

For example input:

5
WELCOME TO FACEBOOK HACKERCUP
CUP WITH LABEL HACKERCUP BELONGS TO HACKER
QUICK CUTE BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
MOVE FAST BE BOLD
HACK THE HACKERCUP

Produces this output:

Case #1: 1
Case #2: 2
Case #3: 1
Case #4: 0
Case #5: 1

Did you participate in Facebook Hacker Cup? If so, what was your approach in solving this problem?