Level: Medium
Concepts: Greedy,Dynamic programming, hashing
Problem link: http://www.codechef.com/CRNM2014/problems/CRANBROM
This one can be done in many ways. Here is an O(n) solution .
Below I will outline a way where we dynamically store whatever best so far we could have earned every time we find a broom.
Whenever we have a customer we will compare the current profit with the one will be making if we sell the broom being demanded.
Pseudocode:
//initialise an array l with -1
ans=0
for every day iterate:
string,i=input();//take the input
if string=='found':
l[i]=ans
else if l[i]>=0:
ans=max(ans,l[i]+i)
l[i]=-1
print ans