problemeasyalgorithmsleetcode-3498leetcode 3498leetcode3498

Reverse Degree of a String

EasyUpdated: Aug 2, 2025
Practice on:
LeetCode

Problem

Given a string s, calculate its reverse degree.

The reverse degree is calculated as follows:

  1. For each character, multiply its position in the reversed alphabet ('a' = 26, 'b' = 25, ..., 'z' = 1) with its position in the string (1-indexed).
  2. Sum these products for all characters in the string.

Return the reverse degree of s.

Examples

Example 1

Input: s = "abc"
Output: 148
Explanation:
Letter | Index in Reversed Alphabet | Index in String | Product  
---|---|---|---  
`'a'` | 26 | 1 | 26  
`'b'` | 25 | 2 | 50  
`'c'` | 24 | 3 | 72  
The reversed degree is `26 + 50 + 72 = 148`.

Example 2

Input: s = "zaza"
Output: 160
Explanation:
Letter | Index in Reversed Alphabet | Index in String | Product  
---|---|---|---  
`'z'` | 1 | 1 | 1  
`'a'` | 26 | 2 | 52  
`'z'` | 1 | 3 | 3  
`'a'` | 26 | 4 | 104  
The reverse degree is `1 + 52 + 3 + 104 = 160`.

Constraints

  • 1 <= s.length <= 1000
  • s contains only lowercase English letters.

Solution

Method 1 - Direct Calculation

Intuition

For each character, its reverse alphabet index is 26 - (ord(c) - ord('a')). Multiply this by its 1-based position and sum for all characters.

Approach

Iterate through the string, for each character at position i (1-indexed), compute (26 - (ord(c) - ord('a'))) * i, and sum up.

Code

C++
class Solution {
public:
    int reverseDegree(string s) {
        int res = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < s.size(); ++i) {
            int rev = 26 - (s[i] - 'a');
            res += rev * (i + 1);
        }
        return res;
    }
};
Go
func reverseDegree(s string) int {
    res := 0
    for i := 0; i < len(s); i++ {
        rev := 26 - int(s[i]-'a')
        res += rev * (i + 1)
    }
    return res
}
Java
class Solution {
    public int reverseDegree(String s) {
        int res = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); i++) {
            int rev = 26 - (s.charAt(i) - 'a');
            res += rev * (i + 1);
        }
        return res;
    }
}
Kotlin
class Solution {
    fun reverseDegree(s: String): Int {
        var res = 0
        for (i in s.indices) {
            val rev = 26 - (s[i] - 'a')
            res += rev * (i + 1)
        }
        return res
    }
}
Python
class Solution:
    def reverseDegree(self, s: str) -> int:
        return sum((26 - (ord(c) - ord('a'))) * (i + 1) for i, c in enumerate(s))
Rust
impl Solution {
    pub fn reverse_degree(s: String) -> i32 {
        s.chars().enumerate().map(|(i, c)| (26 - (c as u8 - b'a') as i32) * (i as i32 + 1)).sum()
    }
}
TypeScript
function reverseDegree(s: string): number {
    let res = 0;
    for (let i = 0; i < s.length; i++) {
        const rev = 26 - (s.charCodeAt(i) - 'a'.charCodeAt(0));
        res += rev * (i + 1);
    }
    return res;
}

Complexity

  • ⏰ Time complexity: O(n) — single pass through the string.
  • 🧺 Space complexity: O(1) — only a few variables are used.

Comments