Welcome to a delightful lesson on array traversal! Today, we invite you to join an endearing bunny named Gloria on an intricate quest. Gloria has a soft spot for number games, especially when they involve hopping between arrays. Our goal, on this exciting journey, is to assist Gloria through her escapade and identify the maximum value she encounters along the way. Are you ready to embark on this adventure?

Gloria's quest unravels with two arrays, both brimming with non-negative integers. Starting at the first element of arrayA, she leaps to arrayB based on the index she discovers in arrayA. She then bounces back to arrayA according to the index she stumbles upon in arrayB. Gloria repeats these hops until she returns to where she started in arrayA. What an adventure!

Your challenge is to craft a Scala function that aids Gloria on her trip. The function will take two lists of integers as inputs, representing arrayA and arrayB. The objective is to find the highest value from arrayB that Gloria jumps to during her voyage.

It is guaranteed that at some point Gloria returns to the starting position.

Example

If arrayA = List(2, 4, 3, 1, 6) and arrayB = List(4, 0, 3, 2, 0), the output should be 3.

In this scenario, Gloria starts from the first element of arrayA, which is 2. Then, she jumps to arrayB at index 2, where she discovers 3. She then bounces back to arrayA at index 3, where she arrives at 1. From there, she leaps back to arrayB at index 1, stumbling upon a 0. Finally, she bounces back to arrayA at index 0, a location where she started her adventure. Hence, she stops here, and during this journey, she came across the highest value 3 from arrayB.

Before we make headway with our code, let's kickstart with the initialization of variables. Let indexA and indexB denote the last positions of Gloria in arrayA and arrayB, respectively. We will also use maxValue for tracking the highest value encountered in arrayB. Her quest starts from arrayA, so we also maintain a Boolean flag inArrayA.

Scala
Copy to clipboard
1var indexA: Int = 0
2var indexB: Option[Int] = None
3var inArrayA: Boolean = true
4var maxValue: Int = Int.MinValue

Our assistant for Gloria’s hopping challenge will be a while loop! This keeps iterating until Gloria returns to her starting position in arrayA.

If Gloria is in arrayA, we check if the value in arrayB where she is going to land is greater than maxValue, and update maxValue if it is. We also switch Gloria's position to the other array in each iteration.

Scala
Copy to clipboard
1while (true) {
2  if (inArrayA) {
3    indexB = arrayA(indexA)
4    if (arrayB(indexB.get) > maxValue) {
5      maxValue = arrayB(indexB.get)
6    }
7  } else {
8    indexA = arrayB(indexB.get)
9    if (indexA == 0) {
10      return maxValue
11    }
12  }
13  inArrayA = !inArrayA
14}

Collecting all the pieces together, here's our ultimate function:

Scala
Copy to clipboard
1def solution(arrayA: List[Int], arrayB: List[Int]): Int = {
2  var indexA: Int = 0
3  var indexB: Option[Int] = None
4  var inArrayA: Boolean = true
5  var maxValue: Int = Int.MinValue
6  while (true) {
7    if (inArrayA) {
8      indexB = arrayA(indexA)
9      if (arrayB(indexB.get) > maxValue) {
10        maxValue = arrayB(indexB.get)
11      }
12    } else {
13      indexA = arrayB(indexB.get)
14      if (indexA == 0) {
15        return maxValue
16      }
17    }
18    inArrayA = !inArrayA
19  }
20}

Heartiest congratulations on guiding Gloria through her array hopping adventure. Not only have you heightened Gloria's joy, but you've also skillfully solved a complex task. You've deftly handled arrays, tracked indices, and made careful use of conditional statements.

This experience should empower you to take on more complex coding challenges. Keep practicing, keep exploring, and keep growing. Happy coding!