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The WeakReference class, monitoring memory leak and garbage collection in a Java application

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 Below is a Stack implementation that uses an internal resizeable array structure.  public class MyStack< T > implements Stack< T > { private static final int CAPACITY = 100 ; private Object[] array ; private int pos = 0 ; public MyStack () { this . array = new Object[ CAPACITY ] ; } @Override public void push ( T item) { if ( pos >= array . length / 2 ) { Object[] newArray = new Object[ pos * 2 ] ; System. arraycopy ( array , 0 , newArray , 0 , array . length ) ; array = newArray ; } array [ pos ++] = item ; } @Override public T pop () { if (isEmpty()) { throw new RuntimeException( "empty stack" ) ; } @SuppressWarnings ( "unchecked" ) T item = ( T ) array [ pos - 1 ] ; pos -= 1 ; return item ; } @Override @SuppressWarnings ( "unchecked" ) public T peek...
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A* Search Algorithm and Priority Queues

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In this blog post, I'll examine the fifteen-puzzle problem . We have an n x n grid filled with numbers from 1 to n-1. Our aim is to reach the position called the "goal board." For example, for a 3x3 grid, our goal board is: 1  2  3 4  5  6 7  8 To reach there, we will be sliding blocks horizontally and vertically to the blank square. The solution approach to this problem utilizes the A* search algorithm . These kinds of algorithms use heuristics to arrive better positions. Let's explain the steps of the algorithm: Create a priority queue and enqueue the initial position. Dequeue the best item using the heuristics. Insert all neighbours of the dequeued item into the queue. Repeat this procedure until the goal board is dequeued.  For each position we need to calculate the heuristic function. For this problem, we can use one of the two priority fuctions: 1) Hamming priority function: The number of blocks in the wrong position. 2) Manh...
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A Pattern Recognition Problem: Finding Line Segments Effectively In Java

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Lets say we are given a set of  n  points and we need to find every line segment that connects 4 or more of the points. We have an immutable data type for Point: public class Point implements Comparable {     private final int x;        private final int y;        //...     public int compareTo(Point that) {         if (that.y == y && that.x == x) {             return 0;         }         if (y < that.y) {             return -1;         }         if (y > that.y) {             return 1;         }         if (x < that.x) {             return -1;         }         // ...
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Dynamic Connectivity Problem and the Union-Find Algorithm

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Lets say we need to connect some objects and query if some objects are connected or not. Below is an example test: @Test     public void testConnectivity() {         MyConnectionDb connectDb = new MyConnectionDb();         connectDb.connect(4, 3);         connectDb.connect(3, 8);         connectDb.connect(6, 5);         connectDb.connect(9, 4);         connectDb.connect(2, 1);         assertTrue(connectDb.isConnected(8, 9));         assertFalse(connectDb.isConnected(5, 4));         connectDb.connect(5, 0);         connectDb.connect(7, 2);         connectDb.connect(6, 1);         connectDb.connect(7, 3);         assertTrue(connectDb.isConnected(5, 3));     } So whe...
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Trie Data Structure and Finding Patterns in a Collection of Words

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 I faced a very hard problem recently about finding substrings based on a collection of patterns.  Example For  words = ["Apple", "Melon", "Orange", "Watermelon"]  and  parts = ["a", "mel", "lon", "el", "An"] , the output should be  findSubstrings(words, parts) = ["Apple", "Me[lon]", "Or[a]nge", "Water[mel]on"] . While  "Watermelon"  contains three substrings from the  parts  array,  "a" ,  "mel" , and  "lon" ,  "mel"  is the longest substring that appears first in the string. Note: Number of words and number of parts can be huge! A brute force method or careless usage of Java String methods would make it impossible to handle a large number of words and parts (patterns). Solution Approach Whenever we want to search patterns inside a string, we should think about the Trie data structure:  https://en.wikipedia....
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My Crappy Looking Solution to "Binary Tree Common Ancestor" Problem

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I was able to solve this problem and make all the tests pass: https://www.hackerrank.com/challenges/binary-search-tree-lowest-common-ancestor/problem But I'm not happy with the code, so later I need to refactor the code. Here it is: static Node lca(Node root, int v1, int v2) { ArrayList result = new ArrayList<>(); Node result2 = traverse (root, v1, v2, result); if (result.isEmpty()) return result2; return result.get( 0 ); } private static Node traverse(Node root, int v1, int v2, ArrayList result) { if (!result.isEmpty()) { return result.get( 0 ); } if (root. left == null && root. right == null ) { return root; } if (root. data == v1 || root. data == v2) { return root; } Node node1 = null , node2 = null ; if (root. left != null ) node1 = traverse (root. left , v1, v2, result); if (root. right != null ) node2 = traverse (root. right , v1, v...
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A Graph Application in Java: Using WordNet to Find Outcast Words

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I'll explain our intent with an example: Let's say we have the following words: horse, zebra, cat, bear, table Which one is the outcast? The table.. But how can a computer system find this? We are talking about the whole English language and any word can be in this list. The number of words in the list can be huge, so the solution should use appropriate data structures and algorithms.  We'll use WordNet which is a graph of English words. It contains the semantic relationships between words and our concern is the "is a" relationship. For our example, we know that horse and cat are both animals. "Table" is not an animal and it is the outcast in this situation. But we even have the ability to tell that horse and zebra is very close. Below is a unit test that shows a high level view of our application in Java: public class OutcastTest {     private WordNet wordNet;     private Outcast outcast;     @Before ...
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