Jane Street Interview Question for Software Engineer / Developers


Country: United States
Interview Type: Phone Interview




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type 'a tree = 
    | Leaf of 'a 
    | Tree of 'a tree list

let flatten tree = 
    let rec aux root acc = match root with 
        | [] -> acc
        | Leaf x::t -> aux t (x::acc)
        | Tree h::t -> aux t (aux h acc)
    in List.rev(aux tree []);;

flatten [ Tree [ Leaf 1; Leaf 2 ; Tree [ Leaf 3 ; Tree [ Leaf 4 ]]]];;

OCaml and other functional languages were made for this problem.

In a C program, I would use a qualified union, which is the alternative in an imperative language.

typedef struct _Tree {
      int tell;
      int branch_count;
      union _Data {
            int num;
            struct _Tree *branches;
      } Data;
} Tree;

}

I believe the size of the union is the size of the largest of its elements, where the union can only be one of the elements at any one time; hence, it can either be a pointer to its first branch, or it can be a leaf's data. The tell int determines if it is a leaf or a node with branches. If it does have branches, num_branches determines how many.

- panoptic.biopower December 14, 2012 | Flag Reply


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