Problem: find an index N where the sum of the integers to the left of N is equal to the sum of the integers to the right of N. If there is no index that would make this happen, return -1.
My solution
function findEvenIndex(arr) {
var sum = i => i.reduce((a, b) => a + b),
l = arr.length;
for (let j = 0; j <= l; j++) {
if (sum(arr.slice(0, j - 1)) === sum(arr.slice(j, l))) {
return j
} else {
continue;
}
}
return -1
}
findEvenIndex([1,2,3,4,3,2,1]), it doesn't return anything. Where is the error that prevents 3 from being returned in the case of this example?
I've set the for loop procedure as follows to see what's going on
for(let j = 0; j <= arr.length; j++){
var left = arr.slice(0, j-1), right = arr.slice(j)
console.log(left, right)
}
/* returns
[1] [3,4,3,2,1]
[1,2] [4,3,2,1]
[1,2,3] [3,2,1]
as expected
*/
However, when try to console.log the sum of these arrays:
function sum(i){ return i.reduce((a, b) => a+b)}
var l = arr.length;
for(let j = 0; j <= l; j++){
var left = arr.slice(0, j-1), right = arr.slice(j)
console.log(sum(left), sum(right))
}
Using the snippet above, findEvenIndex([1,2,3,4,3,2,1]) returns "15 16"?
your for loop is going all the way to l where it should stop at l-1
This isn't needed:
} else {
continue;
}
performance wise, you don't need to compute so many stuff each time.
An alternative would be to progressively sum elements before your pivot and check if it's equal to half of (sum of all elements minus pivot value)