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1269. Number of Ways to Stay in the Same Place After Some Steps

Description

You have a pointer at index 0 in an array of size arrLen. At each step, you can move 1 position to the left, 1 position to the right in the array, or stay in the same place (The pointer should not be placed outside the array at any time).

Given two integers steps and arrLen, return the number of ways such that your pointer is still at index 0 after exactly steps steps. Since the answer may be too large, return it modulo 109 + 7.

 

Example 1:

Input: steps = 3, arrLen = 2
Output: 4
Explanation: There are 4 differents ways to stay at index 0 after 3 steps.
Right, Left, Stay
Stay, Right, Left
Right, Stay, Left
Stay, Stay, Stay

Example 2:

Input: steps = 2, arrLen = 4
Output: 2
Explanation: There are 2 differents ways to stay at index 0 after 2 steps
Right, Left
Stay, Stay

Example 3:

Input: steps = 4, arrLen = 2
Output: 8

 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= steps <= 500
  • 1 <= arrLen <= 106

 

Solutions

Solution: Dynamic Programming

  • Time complexity: O(n)
  • Space complexity: O(n)

 

JavaScript

js
/**
 * @param {number} steps
 * @param {number} arrLen
 * @return {number}
 */
const numWays = function (steps, arrLen) {
  const MODULO = 10 ** 9 + 7;
  const n = Math.min(Math.floor(steps / 2) + 1, arrLen);
  let dp = Array.from({ length: n }, () => 0);

  dp[0] = 1;

  for (let step = 1; step <= steps; step++) {
    const nextDp = [...dp];

    for (let index = 0; index < n; index++) {
      if (index > 0) {
        nextDp[index] += dp[index - 1];
      }
      if (index < n - 1) {
        nextDp[index] += dp[index + 1];
      }
      nextDp[index] %= MODULO;
    }
    dp = nextDp;
  }
  return dp[0];
};

Released under the MIT license