Airbnb Software Developer Interview Questions and Answers for Freshers

Find sum of k smallest numbers in a BST.

• Traverse the BST in-order and add the k smallest numbers to a sum variable.

• Use a priority queue to keep track of the k smallest numbers.

• If k is greater than the number of nodes in the BST, return the sum of all nodes.

• If k is 0, return 0.

Design algorithm and database for seat booking system of BookMyShow and handle failed payments.

• Create a database with tables for movies, theaters, seats, bookings, and payments

• Use a locking mechanism to prevent double booking of seats

• If payment fails, release the locked seats and notify the user

• Write a query to get the timestamp in SQL: SELECT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP;

Code for time stamp in C

• Use the time.h header file

• Call the time() function to get the current time in seconds

• Convert the time to a string using strftime() function

• Use the format string to specify the desired format of the time stamp

Rearrange array in consecutive pair multiplication in descending order.

• Create a new array to store the multiplied values

• Use a loop to iterate through the original array and multiply consecutive pairs

• Write a compare function to sort the new array in descending order

Code to rearrange an array in maximum-minimum form.

• Sort the array in descending order.

• Create a new array and alternate between adding the maximum and minimum values from the sorted array.

• Return the new array.

• Time complexity: O(nlogn)

• Space complexity: O(n)

stoi() function converts a string to an integer.

• stoi() is a C++ function that takes a string as input and returns an integer.

• It is used to convert a string of digits into an integer.

• It can also handle negative numbers and ignore leading whitespace.

• Example: int num = stoi("123"); // num is now 123

Code for finding the longest common substring in an array of strings.

• Iterate through the first string and check for all possible substrings

• Check if the substring is present in all other strings

• Keep track of the longest common substring found so far

• Return the longest common substring

Answers to common technical questions in a software engineering interview

• A transaction in DBMS is a sequence of operations that must be treated as a single unit of work. ACID properties ensure reliability and consistency of transactions.

• A thread is a lightweight process that shares memory and resources with other threads in the same process. A process is a separate instance of a program.

• Common Linux commands include ls...read more

Given a 2D matrix with doors and walls, fill distance matrix with minimum distance to the nearest door.

• Iterate through the matrix and find the doors

• Use Breadth-First Search (BFS) to calculate the minimum distance from each cell to the nearest door

• Update the distance matrix with the minimum distances

Find kth smallest element in unordered array with O(1) space

• Use the QuickSelect algorithm to partition the array and find the kth smallest element

• Choose a pivot element and partition the array into two subarrays

• Recursively partition the subarray that contains the kth smallest element

• Repeat until the pivot element is the kth smallest element

• Time complexity: O(n) average case, O(n^2) worst case

To find friends of friends who are not already friends with you, we can first find your friends and then their friends excluding yourself and your friends.

• Get your list of friends

• For each friend, get their list of friends

• Exclude yourself and your friends from the final list of friends of friends

Boundary traversal of a tree is the process of visiting the nodes on the boundary of a tree in a specific order.

• The boundary traversal can be done in three steps: left boundary, leaf nodes, and right boundary.

• For the left boundary, start from the root and traverse down the left side of the tree until reaching a leaf node.

• For the leaf nodes, perform an inorder traversal to visit all the leaf nodes of the tree.

• For the ri...read more

Find the nearest greater value of a given value in a Binary Search Tree (BST).

• Start from the root node and compare the given value with the current node's value.

• If the given value is less than the current node's value, move to the left subtree.

• If the given value is greater than the current node's value, move to the right subtree.

• Keep track of the closest greater value encountered while traversing the tree.

• Return the cl...read more

Given an infinite staircase with a broken kth step, find the maximum height we can reach in n rounds of jumping i steps.

• We can start by jumping the maximum number of steps in each round until we reach the broken step.

• After reaching the broken step, we can discard the i steps that would land us on the broken step and jump the remaining steps.

• We can continue this pattern until we reach the maximum height we can reach wit...read more

Construct a binary tree of height h and merge bottom nodes to create a cone-like structure.

• A binary tree of height h has 2^h - 1 nodes.

• Start combining leaf nodes from the bottom level upwards.

• Each combination can be visualized as merging two nodes into one.

• For example, if h=3, the tree has 7 nodes, and you combine nodes at levels 2 and 1.

• The final structure resembles a cone as nodes are merged.