f.nasim's blog

Round 103(Div 2) Problem C misleading problem statement.
By f.nasim, 13 years ago, In English

Problem statement.

"....a string is good if you can obtain an anagram of the string p from it, replacing the "?" characters by Latin letters....."

Does it mean if I can obtain an anagram of p without replacing "?" characters a good string? I think no. What do you guys think?

My contest submission gets WA on pretest 4 because I didn't count those good strings but I got AC with this.

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13 years ago, # |
  Vote: I like it +31 Vote: I do not like it
I know that the English used in codeforces problems is not properly worded many times, but I don't think this is one of that.

One way of looking at it is, "bba" can be obtained by replacing all "?" in "bba" ( just that there are no "?" present ). May be they could have added in brackets, " ( possibly none ) ", but come on.. this is very much understandable. Its tough for translators to guess all possible interpretations. I think they have improved a lot these days.
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    13 years ago, # ^ |
      Vote: I like it +8 Vote: I do not like it
    You are right. The trouble is sometimes they are explicit in these cases and sometimes not. However I should have given another try.
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      13 years ago, # ^ |
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      It's sometimes a good idea to check your understanding of problem with sample tests. I couldn't understand problem completely as I believe it was not well written so I just took a look at sample tests and understood what the problem asks!
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