HackerRank Solution: Python Mutations [4 Methods]

Question: Python Mutations [Strings]

We have seen that lists are mutable (they can be changed), and tuples are immutable (they cannot be changed).

Let's try to understand this with an example.

You are given an immutable string, and you want to make changes to it.

Example

>>> string = "abracadabra"

You can access an index by:

>>> print string[5]
a

What if you would like to assign a value?

>>> string[5] = 'k' 
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<stdin>", line 1, in <module>
TypeError: 'str' object does not support item assignment

How would you approach this?

One solution is to convert the string to a list and then change the value.

Example

>>> string = "abracadabra"
>>> l = list(string)
>>> l[5] = 'k'
>>> string = ''.join(l)
>>> print string
abrackdabra

Another approach is to slice the string and join it back.

Example

>>> string = string[:5] + "k" + string[6:]
>>> print string
abrackdabra

Task

Read a given string, change the character at a given index and then print the modified string.

Function Description

Complete the mutate_string function in the editor below.

mutate_string has the following parameters:

string string: the string to change
int position: the index to insert the character at
string character: the character to insert

Returns

string: the altered string

Input Format

The first line contains a string, string.
The next line contains an integer position, the index location and a string character, separated by a space.

Sample Input

STDIN           Function
-----           --------
abracadabra     s = 'abracadabra'
5 k             position = 5, character = 'k'

Sample Output

abrackdabra

Possible Solutions

Now, we will discuss the possible solutions for the given problem. We have already been given the following code on hacker rank.

def mutate_string(string, position, character):
    return

if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = input()
    i, c = input().split()
    s_new = mutate_string(s, int(i), c)
    print(s_new)

Now, let us jump into the possible solutions

Solution-1: Using a while loop

Let us first solve the problem using the while loop in Python.

def mutate_string(string, position, character):
    l, i = list(), 0
    while i < len(string):
      if (i == position):
        l += [character]
      else:
        l += [string[i]]
      i += 1
    return ''.join(l)
if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = input()
    i, c = input().split()
    s_new = mutate_string(s, int(i), c)
    print(s_new)

This solution defines a function called "mutate_string" that takes in three parameters: a string, a position, and a character. It creates an empty list called "l" and a variable called "i" initialized to 0. It then enters a while loop that iterates for as many times as there are characters in the input string. Within the loop, if the current iteration index "i" is equal to the input position, it appends the input character to "l", otherwise it appends the character at the corresponding index in the input string. Once the loop completes, it converts the list "l" to a string and returns it. This function effectively replaces a character at a specified position in the input string with a new specified character.

Solution-2: One-line solution

We can solve the given problem in one line of code as well. Let us return the required output from the function in one line of code.

def mutate_string(string, position, character):
    return string[:position]+character+string[position+1:]

if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = input()
    i, c = input().split()
    s_new = mutate_string(s, int(i), c)
    print(s_new)

This solution defines a function called "mutate_string" that takes in three parameters: a string, a position, and a character. It returns a new string that is created by concatenating three parts: the substring from the beginning of the input string up to the specified position, the input character, and the substring from the specified position+1 to the end of the input string. This function effectively replaces a character at a specified position in the input string with a new specified character by using string slicing.

Solution-3: Using list comprehension

Let us now use list comprehension to solve the problem.

def mutate_string(string,pos,charac):
    x = [i for i in string]
    x[pos] = charac 
    return ''.join(x)

if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = input()
    i, c = input().split()
    s_new = mutate_string(s, int(i), c)
    print(s_new)

Similar to previous solutions, this solution also defines a function called "mutate_string" that takes in three parameters: a string, a position, and a character. It creates a list "x" using list comprehension, where each element in the list is a character from the input string. Then it replaces the element at the specified position with the input character. After that it joins all elements of the list using join() function, which returns a string. This function effectively replaces a character at a specified position in the input string with a new specified character by using list comprehension and join function.

This implementation is different from the previous ones in that it creates a list from the input string, modifies the element at the specified position, and then joins the elements of the list to return a new string. The first implementation used a while loop to iterate through the string and the second implementation used string slicing to create the new string.

Solution-4: Using for loop

Similar to the while loop, we can also use the for loop to solve the problem as shown below:

def mutate_string(string, position, character):
    str1=""
    str2=""
    for i in range(len(string)):
        if(i == position):
            break
        else:
            str1+=string[i]
    for i in range(len(str1)+1,len(string)):
                str2+=string[i]
    string=str1+character+str2
    return string
if __name__ == '__main__':
    s = input()
    i, c = input().split()
    s_new = mutate_string(s, int(i), c)
    print(s_new)

Similar to previous solutions, this also defines a function called "mutate_string" that takes in three parameters: a string, a position, and a character. It creates two empty strings, 'str1' and 'str2' and then uses two for loops to iterate through the input string. In the first for loop, it iterates through the input string and if the current iteration index is equal to the input position, it breaks the loop otherwise it appends the current character to 'str1'. In the second for loop, it starts from the length of 'str1'+1 and iterates through the rest of the characters in the input string and appends each character to 'str2'. Then it concatenates 'str1', input character and 'str2' and assigns the result to 'string' and returns it. This function effectively replaces a character at a specified position in the input string with a new specified character by using two loops to create two new strings and then concatenating them.

Summary

In this short article, we discussed how we can solve the mutations problem on hacker rank using four different solutions. We explained each solution in detail.