Feature #3: Power Up the Station
Explore how to efficiently power up four cellular base station dials from 0000 to a target state by avoiding prohibited dead states. Learn to model the problem as a shortest path in a graph and apply breadth-first search to find the minimal dial turns. Understand the implementation details including wrap-around dial values and complexity analysis to prepare for related coding interview questions.
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Description
AT&T just acquired a cellular company in a small town that owns four base stations. The company they acquired owned vintage equipment with dials that must be rotated clockwise or counterclockwise by hand to power up the base stations. There’s one dial for each of the base stations. Each dial has numbers from 0 to 9 and does not stop at either extreme; this means you can rotate clockwise at 9 to go back to 0 or counterclockwise at 0 to go to 9. ...