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The Twenty-first Annual ACM International Collegiate
Programming Contest Finals
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Problem B
Jill Rides Again
Jill likes to ride her bicycle, but since the pretty city of
Greenhills where she lives has grown, Jill often uses the excellent
public bus system for part of her journey. She has a folding bicycle
which she carries with her when she uses the bus for the first part of
her trip. When the bus reaches some pleasant part of the city, Jill
gets off and rides her bicycle. She follows the bus route until she
reaches her destination or she comes to a part of the city she does
not like. In the latter event she will board the bus to finish her
trip.
Through years of experience, Jill has rated each road on an integer
scale of "niceness". Positive niceness values indicate roads
Jill likes; negative values are used for roads she does not like. Jill
plans where to leave the bus and start bicycling, as well as where to
stop bicycling and re-join the bus, so that the sum of niceness values
of the roads she bicycles on is maximized. This means that she will
sometimes cycle along a road she does not like, provided that it joins
up two other parts of her journey involving roads she likes enough to
compensate. It may be that no part of the route is suitable for
cycling so that Jill takes the bus for its entire route. Conversely,
it may be that the whole route is so nice Jill will not use the bus at
all.
Since there are many different bus routes, each with several stops at
which Jill could leave or enter the bus, she feels that a computer
program could help her identify the best part to cycle for each bus
route.
Input
The input file contains information on several bus
routes. The first line of the file is a single integer b
representing the number of route descriptions in the file. The
identifier for each route (r) is the sequence number within
the data file, 1<= r<=b. Each route
description begins with the number of stops on the route: an integer
s, 2 <= s <= 20,000 on a line by itself. The
number of stops is followed by s-1 lines, each line
i (1 <= i < s) is an integer
ni representing Jills assessment of the
niceness of the road between the two stops i and
i+1.
Output
For each route r in the input file, your program should
identify the beginning bus stop i and the ending bus stop
j that identify the segment of the route which yields the
maximal sum of niceness, m = ni +
ni+1
+...+nj-1. If more than one segment is
maximally nice, choose the one with the longest cycle ride (largest
j-i). To break ties in longest maximal segments, choose the
segment that begins with the earliest stop (lowest i). For
each route r in the input file, print a line in the form:
The nicest part of route r is between stops i and j.
However, if the maximal sum is not positive, your program should
print:
Route r has no nice parts.
Sample Input
3
3
-1
6
10
4
-5
4
-3
4
4
-4
4
-5
4
-2
-3
-4
Output for the Sample Output
The nicest part of route 1 is between stops 2 and 3
The nicest part of route 2 is between stops 3 and 9
Route 3 has no nice parts
This page maintained by
Ed Karrels.
Last updated November 6, 1997