Player Class II - codepath/compsci_guides GitHub Wiki

TIP102 Unit 5 Session 1 Advanced (Click for link to problem statements)

Problem Highlights

  • 💡 Difficulty: Easy
  • ⏰ Time to complete: 10 mins
  • 🛠️ Topics: Classes, Constructors

1: U-nderstand

Understand what the interviewer is asking for by using test cases and questions about the problem.

  • Established a set (2-3) of test cases to verify their own solution later.
  • Established a set (1-2) of edge cases to verify their solution handles complexities.
  • Have fully understood the problem and have no clarifying questions.
  • Have you verified any Time/Space Constraints for this problem?
  • What should the items property be initialized to?
    • The items property should be initialized to an empty list.
HAPPY CASE
Input: Player("Yoshi", "Super Blooper")
Output: 
    - character: "Yoshi"
    - kart: "Super Blooper"
    - items: []
Explanation: The properties of the `Player` object are correctly initialized.

EDGE CASE
Input: Player(", ")
Output: 
    - character: "
    - kart: "
    - items: []
Explanation: Even with empty strings as inputs, the properties should be correctly initialized.

2: M-atch

Match what this problem looks like to known categories of problems, e.g. Linked List or Dynamic Programming, and strategies or patterns in those categories.

For Class Initialization problems, we want to consider the following approaches:

  • Class Definition: Defining the class with the __init__ constructor method.
  • Property Initialization: Initializing the properties of the class within the constructor.

3: P-lan

Plan the solution with appropriate visualizations and pseudocode.

General Idea: Define a class Player with a constructor that initializes the character, kart, and items properties.

1) Define the class `Player`.
2) Define the constructor method `__init__` that accepts `character` and `kart` as arguments.
3) Initialize the `character` property with the `character` argument.
4) Initialize the `kart` property with the `kart` argument.
5) Initialize the `items` property with an empty list.

⚠️ Common Mistakes

  • Forgetting to initialize the items property as an empty list.
  • Incorrectly initializing the properties with the wrong argument names.

4: I-mplement

Implement the code to solve the algorithm.

class Player:
    def __init__(self, character, kart):
        self.character = character
        self.kart = kart
        self.items = []

# Example usage
player_one = Player("Yoshi", "Super Blooper")
print(player_one.character)  # Output: "Yoshi"
print(player_one.kart)  # Output: "Super Blooper"
print(player_one.items)  # Output: []

5: R-eview

Review the code by running specific example(s) and recording values (watchlist) of your code's variables along the way. Trace through your code with an input to check for the expected output:

  • Create a Player object with "Yoshi" as the character and "Super Blooper" as the kart.
  • Verify that the character property is "Yoshi".
  • Verify that the kart property is "Super Blooper".
  • Verify that the items property is an empty list.

6: E-valuate

Evaluate the performance of your algorithm and state any strong/weak or future potential work.

  • Time Complexity: O(1) because the initialization of properties is constant time.
  • Space Complexity: O(1) because the space required for the properties is fixed.