String Programming Interview Questions

The string is a primary and probably most common thing you come across on any
programming language and so is with any programming interview. There is almost
always a question on String whether its related to length or replace but I have always
found one or two String programming questions on interviews.

1) Write code to check a String is palindrome or not? (solution)

A palindrome is those String whose reverse is equal to the original. This can be done
by using either StringBuffer reverse() method or by technique demonstrated in the
solution here.

2) Write a method which will remove any given character from a String? (solution)
hint: you can remove a given character from String by converting it into a character
array and then using substring() method for removing them from output string.

3) Print all permutation of String both iterative and Recursive way? (solution)

4) Write a function to find out longest palindrome in a given string? (solution)

5) How to find the first non repeated character of a given String? (solution)

6) How to count the occurrence of a given character in a String? (solution)

7) How to check if two String are Anagram? (solution)

8) How to convert numeric String to int in Java? (solution)

Some more String related Questions which mostly appear in Java programming
interviews:

1) What is the difference between String, StringBuilder, and StringBuffer in

Java? (answer)
The main difference is that String is immutable but both StringBuilder and
StringBuffer are mutable. Also, StringBuilder is not synchronized like StringBuffer and
that's why faster and should be used for temporary String manipulation.
2) Why String is final in Java? (answer)
The string is final because of same reason it is immutable. Couple of reasons which I
think make sense is an implementation of String pool, Security, and Performance.
Java designers know that String will be used heavily in every single Java program, so
they optimized it from the start.

3) How to Split String in Java? (answer)

Java API provides several convenient methods to split a string based upon any
delimiter e.g. comma, semicolon or colon. You can even use a regular expression to
split a big string into several smaller strings.

4) Why Char array is preferred over String for storing password? (answer)

Programming questions on Array

An array is one of the topics where most of the programming questions are asked.
There are many and many programming questions on Array and here I have included
only some of them which are not very difficult to solve but some of array
programming question can be extremely challenging, so well prepare this topic.

9) In an array 1-100 numbers are stored, one number is missing how do you find
it? (solution)

10) In an array 1-100 exactly one number is duplicate how do you find it?
(solution)

11) In an array 1-100 multiple numbers are duplicates, how do you find
it? (solution)
One trick in this programming questions is by using HashMap or Hashtable, we can
store a number as key and its occurrence as value if the number is already present in
Hashtable then increment its value or insert value as 1 and later on print all those
numbers whose values are more than one.

12) Given two arrays, 1,2,3,4,5 and 2,3,1,0,5 find which number is not present in
the second array.
Here is a quick tip to solve this programming question: put the elements of the second
array in the Hashtable and for every element of the first array, check whether it’s
present in the hash or not, O/P all those elements from the first array that are not
present in the hash table

13) How do you find the second highest number in an integer array? (solution)

14) How to find all pairs in an array of integers whose sum is equal to the given
number? (solution)

15) How to remove duplicate elements from the array in Java? (solution)

16) How to find the largest and smallest number in an array? (solution)

17) How to find the top two maximum number in an array? (solution)

LinkedList Programming Interview Questions

A linked list is another important data structure after array and String. It actually
compliments array and whatever you cannot do with an array, you can do with a
linked list.

For example, the array needs contiguous memory to store objects but the linked list
doesn't need that. It's difficult to add and remove elements in an array because you
need to shift existing elements but that is very easy with a linked list, as you just
need to change the pointer to accommodate them.

But, nothing is free in this world. While linked list provides all these functionalities
but the cost of that you lose the ability to search elements in constant time with
index. Searching and element require traversing linked list, which means examining
all nodes, thus cost around O(n) time.

14) How do you find middle element of a linked list in a single pass?
To answer this programming question I would say you start with a simple solution on
which you traverse the LinkedList until you find the tail of linked list where it points
to null to find the length of the linked list and then reiterating till middle.

After this answer interviewer will ask you to find the middle element in single pass
and there you can explain that by doing space-time trade-off you can use two pointers
one incrementing one step at a time and other incrementing two-step a time, so when
the first pointer reaches end of linked second pointer will point to the middle
element.

15) How do you find the 3rd element from last in a single pass? (solution)
This programming question is similar to above and can be solved by using 2 pointers,
start the second pointer when the first pointer reaches third place.

16) How do you find if there is any loop in a singly linked list? How do you find the
start of the loop? (solution)
This programming question can also be solved using 2 pointers and if you increase one
pointer one step at a time and other as two steps at a time they will meet in some
point if there is a loop.

17) How do you reverse a singly linked list? (solution)

18) Difference between a linked list and array data structure? (answer)

Binary Tree Programming Interview Questions

Binary tree or simply tree is one of favorite topic for most of the interviewer and pose
a real challenge if you struggle with recursion. Programming questions on the tree can
become increasingly difficult when you think iterative but sometimes can be very easy
if you come with a recursive solution.

18) How do you find the depth of a binary tree? (solution)

19) Write code to print InOrder traversal of a tree? (solution)

20) Print out all leaf node of a binary tree? (solution)

21) Write a method in Java to check if a tree is a binary search tree or not? (solution)

22) How to check if a tree is balanced or not in Java? (solution)

23) How is a binary search tree implemented? (solution)

24) How do you perform preorder traversal in a given binary tree? (solution)

25) How do you traverse a given binary tree in preorder without recursion? (solution)

26) How do you print all nodes of a given binary tree using inorder traversal without
recursion? (solution)
27) How do you implement a postorder traversal algorithm? (solution)
28) How do you traverse a binary tree in postorder traversal without recursion?
(solution)
29) How are all leaves of a binary search tree printed? (solution)
40) How do you count a number of leaf nodes in a given binary tree? (solution)
41) How do you perform a binary search in a given array? (solution)

Binary tree based questions sometimes get trick and if you are having trouble solving
these tree-based list coding questions then I suggest you revise your data structure
and algorithms skill by going through From 0 to 1: Data Structures & Algorithms in
Java course.
It's written by an ex-Googler and it is one of the most comprehensive course to revise
all important data structures like an array, linked list, binary tree etc.

Programming Questions on Searching and Sorting

I have only included two programming questions related to searching and sorting but
there are more can be found on Google. Purpose of these programming questions is to
see whether a programmer is familiar with the essential search and sort mechanism or
not.

23) Write a program to sort numbers in place using quick sort? (solution)

24) Write a program to implement a binary search algorithm in Java or

C++? (solution)

25) How do you sort Java object using Comparator? (answer)

This is another Java specific programming questions and you can check how to sort
Object using Comparator and Comparable for an answer.

26) Write code to implement Insertion Sort in Java? (solution)

27) Write code to implement Bubble Sort in Java? (solution)

Programming Questions on Numbers

Most of the programming questions are based on numbers and these are the ones
which most of us did on college level and mind you they still has value I have seen
programmers with experience of 3 years struggle with these programming questions
and doesn't solve it some time and take a lot of time which simply shows that they are
not in programming in there day to day work.

26) Write code to check whether a no is a power of two or not?

27) Write a program to check whether a number is a palindrome or not?

Check out this post which shows how to reverse a number in Java and can be used to
find if its palindrome or not.

28) Write code to check whether an integer is Armstrong number or not?

Here is a Java program to find Armstrong number, you can use the same logic to write
code in any other programming language like C and C++.

29) Write a program to find all prime number up to a given number?

Here is another Java program to find prime numbers and print them. By using logic
demonstrated in this program; you can write a similar program in C and C++.

30) Write a function to compute Nth Fibonacci number? Both iterative and
recursive?
You can check this Java program to print Fibonacci Series using recursion and
iteration.

31) How to check if a number is binary?

For this question, you need to write a function which will accept an integer and
return true if it contains only 0 and 1 e.g. if the input is 123 then your function will
return false, for 101 it should return true.

32) How to reverse an integer in Java?

33) How to count a number of set bits in given integer?

34) How to find the sum of digits of a number using recursion?

35) How to swap two numbers without using temp variable?

36) How to find the largest of three integers in Java?

37) Write a program to find prime factors of an integer?

38) How to add two integers without using arithmetic operator?

General Programming Interview Questions

In this category of programming questions, I have put questions which are not fit into
any data structure but presents a real-life problem and you need to provide a
solution. These programming questions are sometimes based on problems faced by
the developer itself

31) Write a program to find out if two rectangles R1 and R2 are overlapping?

32) You need to write a function to climb n steps you can climb either 1 step at a
time or 2 steps a time, write a function to return a number of ways to climb a ladder
with n step.
It's actually a Fibonacci series so you can solve it like that.

33) Write code for Generate Random No in a range from min to max?

34) Write a program for word-wrap which should work on any screen size?
35) Design an algorithm to find the frequency of occurrence of a word in an article?

36) Write a program to implement a blocking queue in Java?

37) Write a program for the producer-consumer problem?