Sort a stack of pancakes by flipping them using spatula.
- There are N pancakes with diameters 1:N.
- Spatula can be inserted anywhere in the stack and used to flip all the pancakes above.
- Sort pancakes in increasing order.
- Return a vector of places where spatula was inserted.
- Minimize number of flips, your score will depend on the number of flips in the last few tests.
- References: math.illinois.edu, wikipedia.
Example (horizontal view):
Initial stack: 6 4 2 5 3 1, ("," indicates position of spatula)
first flip: 1 3 5,2 4 6
second: 5 3 1 2 4,6
... 4 2 1 3,5 6
3 1 2,4 5 6
2 1,3 4 5 6
sorted! 1 2 3 4 5 6
positions of spatula from the begining: 6 3 5 4 3 2
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William Gates and Christos Papadimitrou solved this problem, before the former left to co-found Microsoft. Very interesting problem indeed.
Is the scoring system still working?
Lincoln, I checked the reference solution and it showed that the manual scoring system no longer works.
I will see what changes I can do and notify it here.
Unfortunately, the scoring system is broken (same as in the TRON challenge by Alfonso).
No way to get the Indexing IV badge :-(
@Stefan, I have commented out the part that outdated and the test suite is working now.
I have rescored your solution, you can now (hopefully) get the Indexing IV badge!