Hi,
I came across this problem in an interview website. The problem asks for efficiently implement three stacks in a single array, such that no stack overflows until there is no space left in the entire array space.
For implementing 2 stacks in an array, it's pretty obvious: 1st stack grows from LEFT to RIGHT, and 2nd stack grows from RIGHT to LEFT; and when the stackTopIndex crosses, it signals an overflow.
Thanks in advance for your insightful answer.
First stack grows from left to right.
Second stack grows from right to left.
Third stack starts from the middle. Suppose odd sized array for simplicity. Then third stack grows like this:
* * * * * * * * * * *
5 3 1 2 4
First and second stacks are allowed to grow maximum at the half size of array. The third stack can grow to fill in the whole array at a maximum.
Worst case scenario is when one of the first two arrays grows at 50% of the array. Then there is a 50% waste of the array. To optimise the efficiency the third array must be selected to be the one that grows quicker than the other two.
first stack grows at 3n, second stack grows at 3n+1, third grows at 3n+2
for n={0...N}
You can implement three stacks with a linked list:
A linked list can be implemented within an array.
How (space) efficent is this?
It is no problem to build a linked list by using two cells of an array for each list element (value + pointer). Depending on the specification you could even get pointer and value into one array element (e.g. the array is long, value and pointer are only int).
Compare this to the solution of kgiannakakis ... where you lose up to 50% (only in the worst case). But I think that my solution is a bit cleaner (and maybe more academic, which should be no disadvantage for an interview question ^^).
This is an interesting conundrum, and I don't have a real answer but thinking slightly outside the box...
it could depend on what each element in the stack consists of. If it's three stacks of true/false flags, then you could use the first three bits of integer elements. Ie. bit 0 is the value for the first stack, bit 1 is the value for the second stack, bit 2 is the value for the third stack. Then each stack can grow independently until the whole array is full for that stack. This is even better as the other stacks can also continue to grow even when the first stack is full.
I know this is cheating a bit and doesn't really answer the question but it does work for a very specific case and no entries in the stack are wasted. I am watching with interest to see whether anyone can come up with a proper answer that works for more generic elements.
Assuming that all array positions should be used to store values - I guess it depends on your definition of efficiency.
If you do the two stack solution, place the third stack somewhere in the middle, and track both its bottom and top, then most operations will continue to be efficient, at a penalty of an expensive Move operation (of the third stack towards wherever free space remains, moving to the half way point of free space) whenever a collision occurs.
It's certainly going to be quick to code and understand. What are our efficiency targets?
Split array in any 3 parts (no matter if you'll split it sequentially or interleaved). If one stack grows greater than 1/3 of array you start filling ends of rest two stacks from the end.
aaa bbb ccc 1 2 3 145 2 3 145 2 6 3 145 2 6 3 7 145 286 3 7 145 286 397
The worse case is when two stacks grows up to 1/3 boundary and then you have 30% of space waste.
Yet another approach (as additional to linked-list) is to use map of stacks. In that case you'll have to use additional log(3^n)/log(2) bits for building map of data distribution in your n-length array. Each of 3-value part of map says which stack is owns next element.
Ex. a.push(1); b.push(2); c.push(3); a.push(4); a.push(5); will give you image
aacba 54321
appropriate value of map is calculated while elements is pushed onto stack (with shifting contents of array)
map0 = any
map1 = map0*3 + 0
map2 = map1*3 + 1
map3 = map2*3 + 2
map4 = map3*3 + 0
map5 = map4*3 + 0 = any*3^5 + 45
and length of stacks 3,1,1
Once you'll want to do c.pop() you'll have to reorganize your elements by finding actual position of c.top() in original array through walking in cell-map (i.e. divide by 3 while mod by 3 isn't 2) and then shift all contents in array back to cover that hole. While walking through cell-map you'll have to store all position you have passed (mapX) and after passing that one which points to stack "c" you'll have to divide by 3 yet another time and multiply it by 3^(amount positions passed-1) and add mapX to get new value of cells-map.
Overhead for that fixed and depends on size of stack element (bits_per_value):
(log(3**n)/log(2)) / (n*log(bits_per_value)/log(2)) = log(3**n) / (n*log(bits_per_value)) = log(3) / log(bits_per_value)
So for bits_per_value = 32 it will be 31.7% space overhead and with growing bits_per_value it will decay (i.e. for 64 bits it will be 26.4%).
See Knuth, The Art of Computer Programming, Volume 1, Section 2.2.2. titled "Sequential allocation". Discusses allocating multiple queues/stacks in a single array, with algorithms dealing with overflows, etc.
We can use long bit array representing to which stack the i-th array cell belongs to. We can take values by modulo 3 (00 - empty, 01 - A, 10 - B, 11 - C). It would take N/2 bits or N/4 bytes of additional memory for N sized array.
For example for 1024 long int elements (4096 bytes) it would take only 256 bytes or 6%.
This bit array map can be placed in the same array at the beginning or at the end, just shrinking the size of the given array by constant 6%!