Home »
Interview coding problems/challenges
Sum of all substrings of a number
Sum of all substrings of a number: This is a standard interview problem asked in many interview coding rounds, also got featured in amazon coding rounds.
Submitted by Radib Kar, on June 12, 2020 [Last updated : March 20, 2023]
Problem Description
Given an integer, S represented as a string, get the sum of all possible substrings of this string.
Input
A string S that representing the number.
Output
Print sum of all possible substrings as required result.
Constraints
1 <= T <= 100
1 <= S <= 1012
Example
Input:
1234
326
Output:
1670
395
Explanation
For the first input 1234,
All possible substrings are
1, 2, 3, 4, 12, 13, 23, 34, 123, 234, 1234
Total sum = 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 + 12 + 23 + 34 + 123 + 234 + 1234 = 1670
For the second input 326
All possible substrings are
3, 2, 6
32, 26
326
Total sum=3+2+6+32+26+326= 395
Solution Approach
The solution approach is by storing the substring sums to compute the exact next substring sum
- Create dp[n][n] to store substring sums;
- Initialize sum=0 which will be our final result;
-
Base case computation (single length substrings),
for i=0 to n-1,n= string length
dp[i][i]=s[i] -'0'; //s[i]-'0' gives the digit actually
sum+=dp[i][i];
end for
-
Till now we have computed all single digit substrings,
for substring length,len=2 to n
for start=0 to n-len
//so basically it's the substring s[start,end]
int end=start+len-1;
dp[start][end]=dp[start][end-1]*10+s[end]-'0';
sum+=dp[start][end];
end for
end for
- Sum is the final result.
All the statements are self-explanatory except the one which is the fundamental idea of the entire storing process. That is the below one,
dp[start][end]=dp[start][end-1]*10+s[end]-'0';
Let's check this with an example,
Say we are computing for string s="1234"
At some stage of computing,
Start=1, end= 3
So
Dp[start][end]=dp[start][end-1]*10+s[end]-'0'
So basically we are computing value of substring s[start..end]
with help of already computed s[start,end-1]
For this particular example
s[start..end] ="234"
s[start..end-1] ="23"
Now, dp[1][3]=dp[1][2]*10+'4'-'0'
So, assuming the fact that our algo is correct and thus dp[start][end-1]
has the correct value, dp[]1[2] would be 23 then
So,
dp[1][3]=23*10+'4'-'0=234
and that's true
So, here's the main logic
Now how dp[1][2] is guaranteed to be correct can be
explored if we start filling the Dp table from the base conditions?
Let's start for the same example
N=4 here
So, we need to fill up a 4X4 DP table,
After filling the base case,
Now, I am computing for len=2
Start=0, end=1
Start=1, end=2
Start=2, end=3
For len =3
Start=0, end=2
Start=1, end=3
Len=4
Start=0, end=3
At each step we have summed up, so result is stored at sum.
C++ implementation of Sum of all substrings of a number
#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;
void print(vector<int> a, int n)
{
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
cout << a[i] << " ";
cout << endl;
}
long long int my(string s, int n)
{
long long int dp[n][n];
long long int sum = 0;
for (int i = 0; i < n; i++) {
dp[i][i] = s[i] - '0';
sum += dp[i][i];
}
for (int len = 2; len <= n; len++) {
for (int start = 0; start <= n - len; start++) {
int end = start + len - 1;
dp[start][end] = dp[start][end - 1] * 10 + s[end] - '0';
sum += dp[start][end];
}
}
return sum;
}
int main()
{
int t, n, item;
cout << "enter the string: ";
string s;
cin >> s;
cout << "sum of all possible substring is: " << my(s, s.length()) << endl;
return 0;
}
Output
RUN 1:
enter the string: 17678
sum of all possible substring is: 29011
RUN 2:
enter the string: 326
sum of all possible substring is: 395