LeetCode 605. Can Place Flowers

Introduction

LeetCode 605: Can Place Flowers is a coding challenge that assesses your proficiency in list manipulation and conditional logic. The problem presents a scenario where you have a flowerbed represented as an array, and you want to determine if you can plant flowers in some of the available spaces while adhering to certain conditions. In this article, we'll delve into a detailed walkthrough of the problem statement, uncover the key insights, and develop a robust Python solution that ensures accuracy and efficiency.

Problem Statement

You are given an integer array flowerbed consisting of 0's and 1's. Each 0 represents an empty space where you can plant a flower, and each 1 represents a space occupied by a flower. There are two conditions that must be met to plant flowers:

• Each flower must be planted in an empty space.
• There must be at least one empty space between two adjacent flowers.

Given the flowerbed, your task is to determine whether you can plant flowers in it without violating the conditions.

Insights and Approach

The key to solving this problem lies in understanding the constraints and applying conditional logic to determine where you can plant flowers. Here are some insights that will guide our approach:

• Boundary Conditions: Pay close attention to the boundaries of the flowerbed. Since flowers cannot be planted on the boundaries, we need to handle these cases separately.
• Loop through the Array: Iterate through the flowerbed array using a for loop.
• Check for Empty Spaces: For each position in the array, check if the current position and its adjacent positions (if they exist) are empty.
• Plant Flowers: If the conditions are met, plant a flower in the current position by setting the value to 1.

Python Implementation

Based on the insights we gathered, let's dive into the Python implementation of the solution:

def canPlaceFlowers(flowerbed):
    # Check boundary conditions
    if flowerbed[0] == 0 and flowerbed[1] == 0:
        flowerbed[0] = 1
        return True

    if flowerbed[-1] == 0 and flowerbed[-2] == 0:
        flowerbed[-1] = 1
        return True

    # Iterate through the array
    for i in range(1, len(flowerbed) - 1):
        # Check for empty spaces
        if flowerbed[i - 1] == 0 and flowerbed[i] == 0 and flowerbed[i + 1] == 0:
            # Plant a flower
            flowerbed[i] = 1
    
    # Check if flowers can be planted
    return flowerbed.count(1) > 0

# Example usage
flowerbed1 = [1, 0, 0, 0, 1]
can_plant1 = canPlaceFlowers(flowerbed1)
print(can_plant1)  # True

flowerbed2 = [1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1]
can_plant2 = canPlaceFlowers(flowerbed2)
print(can_plant2)  # True

flowerbed3 = [0, 0, 1, 0, 1]
can_plant3 = canPlaceFlowers(flowerbed3)
print(can_plant3)  # False

Conclusion

In this article, we embarked on a journey to solve LeetCode problem 605: Can Place Flowers using Python. We delved into the problem statement, gained valuable insights, and constructed a robust Python solution. The implementation showcased how to effectively manipulate lists and apply conditional logic to determine where flowers can be planted. This problem serves as an excellent exercise to sharpen your list manipulation skills and problem-solving abilities.