Lifcare Pharmacy Interview Questions and Answers

Round duration - 90 minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round had 3 coding questions of Medium to Hard level of difficulty.

Q1. 
Balanced Parentheses Combinations
Given an integer N representing the number of pairs of parentheses, find all the possible combinations of balanced parentheses using the given number of pairs.
Explanati...read more
Ans. 
Generate all possible combinations of balanced parentheses for a given number of pairs.
• Use recursion to generate all possible combinations of balanced parentheses.

• Keep track of the number of open and close parentheses used in each combination.

• Return the valid combinations as an array of strings.
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Q2. 
Trapping Rain Water Problem Statement
You are given a long type array/list ARR of size N, representing an elevation map. The value ARR[i] denotes the elevation of the ith bar. Your task is to determine th...read more
Ans. 
Calculate the total amount of rainwater that can be trapped between given elevations in an array.
• Iterate through the array and calculate the maximum height on the left and right of each bar.

• Calculate the amount of water that can be trapped at each bar by taking the minimum of the maximum heights on the left and right.

• Sum up the trapped water at each bar to get the total trapped water for the entire array.
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Q3. 
Rotting Oranges Problem Statement
You are given a grid containing oranges where each cell of the grid can contain one of the three integer values:
• 0 - representing an empty cell
• 1 - representing a fre...read more
Ans. 
Find the minimum time required to rot all fresh oranges adjacent to rotten oranges.
• Create a queue to store the coordinates of rotten oranges and perform BFS to rot adjacent fresh oranges.

• Track the time taken to rot all fresh oranges and return -1 if not all fresh oranges can be rotten.

• Update the grid with the new state of oranges after each second.

• Handle edge cases such as empty grid or no fresh oranges present.

• Example...read more
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This was a standard DS/Algo round where I was given 2 questions to solve under 60 minutes. I was able to come up with the optimal approach for both the questions and then at the end of the interview I was also asked the famous Die Hard Water Puzzle.

Q1. 
Queue Using Stacks Implementation
Design a queue data structure following the FIFO (First In First Out) principle using only stack instances.
Explanation:
Your task is to complete predefined functions t...read more
Ans. 
Implement a queue using stacks following FIFO principle.
• Use two stacks to simulate a queue.

• For enQueue operation, push elements onto stack1.

• For deQueue operation, if stack2 is empty, pop all elements from stack1 and push onto stack2, then pop from stack2.

• For peek operation, if stack2 is empty, pop all elements from stack1 and push onto stack2, then return top of stack2.

• For isEmpty operation, check if both stack1 and st...read more
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Q2. 
Merge Intervals Problem Statement
You are provided with 'N' intervals, each containing two integers denoting the start time and end time of the interval.
Your task is to merge all overlapping intervals a...read more
Ans. 
Merge overlapping intervals and return sorted list of merged intervals by start time.
• Sort the intervals based on start time.

• Iterate through intervals and merge overlapping ones.

• Return the merged intervals in sorted order.
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Q3. You have a 3-liter jar and a 5-liter jar. How can you measure exactly 4 liters using these two jars?
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

This round had 2 coding questions - first one related to Binary Tree and the second one was a simple question from Bit Manipulation. This was followed by some questions from OOPS.

Q1. 
Binary Tree Diameter Problem Statement
You are given a Binary Tree, and you need to determine the length of the diameter of the tree.
The diameter of a binary tree is the length of the longest path betwe...read more
Ans. 
The task is to find the diameter of a binary tree, which is the length of the longest path between any two end nodes in the tree.
• Traverse the tree to find the longest path between two nodes.

• Keep track of the maximum diameter found during traversal.

• The diameter may not necessarily pass through the root node.

• Consider both left and right subtrees while calculating the diameter.

• Example: For input 1 2 3 4 -1 5 6 -1 7 -1 -1
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Q2. 
Power of 2 Problem Statement
Determine if it is possible to reorder the digits of a given integer 'N' such that the resulting number is a power of two. The leading digit must not be zero.
Input:
The fir...read more
Ans. 
The problem involves determining if it is possible to reorder the digits of a given integer to form a power of 2.
• Iterate through all possible permutations of the digits of the given integer.

• Check if any of the permutations form a power of 2.

• Return 1 if a valid permutation is found, else return 0.
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Q3. What are some advantages of using Object-Oriented Programming (OOP)?
Ans. 
Advantages of OOP include code reusability, modularity, and easier maintenance.
• Code reusability: Objects can be reused in different parts of the program, reducing redundancy.

• Modularity: OOP allows for breaking down complex problems into smaller, more manageable parts.

• Easier maintenance: Changes to one part of the codebase do not necessarily affect other parts, making maintenance easier.

• Encapsulation: Data hiding and ab...read more
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Q4. What are access specifiers and what is their significance in Object-Oriented Programming?
Ans. 
Access specifiers define the level of access to class members in Object-Oriented Programming.
• Access specifiers include public, private, protected, and default

• Public members are accessible from outside the class

• Private members are only accessible within the class

• Protected members are accessible within the class and its subclasses

• Default access is when no access specifier is specified
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Round duration - 30 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

This was my last round and I hoped it to go good just like the other rounds. The interviewer was very straight to point
and professional. The interview lasted for 30 minutes.

Q1. Why should we hire you?
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Coding test based on Binary trees, String Manipulation

There were 3 coding and 1 SQL question.

Q1. This was regarding the coding test on your approach and how you came with that answer
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Q1. Some technical questions about programming were there to know about your understanding with coding
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

It has 3 Coding Questions of medium-hard level and the time limit was 1 hour only. I don’t exactly remember the questions but I was able to do only two of them completely.

Q1. 
Biggest Number Formation Problem
Your task is to construct the largest number possible by concatenating each of the provided positive integers in the array exactly once.
Input:
Integer T denoting the nu...read more
Ans. 
Construct the largest number by concatenating positive integers in the array exactly once.
• Sort the array of integers in a way that the concatenation of the numbers forms the largest possible number.

• Use a custom comparator function to sort the numbers based on their concatenated values.

• Join the sorted array elements to form the final largest number.
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Q2. 
Number of Longest Increasing Subsequence Problem Statement
Given an integer array ARR of length N, determine the count of longest increasing subsequences present in the array.
Explanation:
The Longest I...read more
Ans. 
Count the number of longest increasing subsequences in an integer array.
• Identify the longest increasing subsequences in the array

• Count the number of such subsequences

• Consider the constraints while implementing the solution

• Examples: For input [50, 3, 90, 60, 80], the output is 2
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Medium

First, the interviewer introduced himself and then asked to introduce myself. Then he asked about the projects I did. After an introductory discussion on projects, he gave me 3 coding questions on their personal live code environment.

He asked me to explain the approach first and then code it down. I had to explain the time complexity of each solution and optimal code if possible with lesser time complexity.

Q1. 
Cache Operations Problem
You are provided with a cache that can hold a maximum of 'N' elements. Initially, this cache is empty. There are two main operations you can perform on this cache:
Explanation:
...read more
Ans. 
Implement a cache with insert, update, and retrieve operations, returning results of retrieve operations in order.
• Create a cache data structure with specified size 'N'.

• Implement insert and update operations based on the given criteria.

• For retrieve operation, return the value associated with the 'U_ID' if present, else return -1.

• Handle cases where the cache is full and least frequently used items need to be removed.

• Retu...read more
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Q2. 
Possible Words from a Phone Number: Problem Statement
Given a string S composed of digits ranging from 2 to 9, determine all possible strings that can be created by mapping these digits to their correspon...read more
Ans. 
Given a phone number, generate all possible words by mapping digits to letters on a T9 keypad.
• Create a mapping of digits to letters on a T9 keypad

• Use recursion to generate all possible combinations of letters for the given phone number

• Sort the resulting strings in lexicographical order
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Q3. 
Shortest Unique Prefix Problem
You are given an array containing N words. Your task is to derive the shortest prefix for each word that uniquely identifies it amongst the other words. For instance, given t...read more
Ans. 
Given an array of words, find the shortest unique prefix for each word.
• Create a Trie data structure to efficiently store and search for prefixes.

• Traverse the Trie to find the shortest unique prefix for each word.

• Return the list of shortest unique prefixes for all words.
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Round duration - 60 Minutes
Round difficulty - Hard

In this round interviewer gave me 2 coding questions and asked me to code on any editor of my choice. I opened VS code to code those problems.

Q1. 
Maximum Subarray Sum Problem Statement
Given an array arr of length N consisting of integers, find the sum of the subarray (including empty subarray) with the maximum sum among all subarrays.
Explanation...read more
Ans. 
Find the sum of the subarray with the maximum sum among all subarrays in a given array.
• Iterate through the array and keep track of the maximum sum subarray seen so far.

• Use Kadane's algorithm to efficiently find the maximum subarray sum.

• Handle cases where all elements are negative by returning the maximum element in the array.

• Consider the sum of an empty subarray as 0.
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Q2. 
LRU Cache Implementation
Design and implement a data structure for the Least Recently Used (LRU) cache, which supports the following operations:
1. get(key) - Return the value associated with the key if ...read more
Ans. 
Implement a Least Recently Used (LRU) cache data structure with get and put operations.
• Use a combination of a hashmap and a doubly linked list to efficiently implement the LRU cache.

• Keep track of the least recently used item and remove it when the cache reaches its capacity.

• Update the position of an item in the cache whenever it is accessed or updated.

• Ensure constant time complexity for both get and put operations by u...read more
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Round duration - 40 Minutes
Round difficulty - Easy

The interviewer was very friendly. He asked me about myself and previous interviews.