Problem

You are given a string s. The score of a string is defined as the sum of the absolute difference between the ASCII values of adjacent characters.

Return the score of s.

Examples

Example 1:

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Input: s = "hello"
Output: 13
Explanation:
The ASCII values of the characters in s are: 'h' = 104, 'e' = 101, 'l' = 108, 'o' = 111. So, the score of s would be |104 - 101| + |101 - 108| + |108 - 108| + |108 - 111| = 3 + 7 + 0 + 3 = 13.

Example 2:

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Input: s = "zaz"
Explanation:
The ASCII values of the characters in s are: 'z' = 122, 'a' = 97. So, the score of s would be |122 - 97| + |97 - 122| = 25 + 25 = 50.

Solution

Method 1 - Iterate on string

We can just iterate on string, calculate the difference as problem says.

Here is the video explanation:

Code

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class Solution {
    public int scoreOfString(String s) {
        int score = 0;
        for (int i = 1; i < s.length(); i++) {
            score += Math.abs(s.charAt(i) - s.charAt(i - 1));
        }
        return score;
    }
}

Complexity

  • ⏰ Time complexity: O(n)
  • 🧺 Space complexity: O(1)