0x01-lockboxes

0x01. Lockboxes 🔐

Welcome to the Lockboxes project, part of the ALX Interview Preparation curriculum. In this project, you'll use your algorithmic skills to determine if all boxes in a list can be unlocked. You’ll apply concepts such as list manipulation, graph theory, recursion, and set operations to create an efficient solution.

📝 Learning Objectives

By completing this project, you will:

• 🔑 Understand List Manipulation: Learn how to access, iterate over, and modify lists dynamically in Python.
• 🌐 Apply Graph Theory Concepts: Explore how boxes and keys can be represented as nodes and edges in a graph, making traversal algorithms useful.
• 🧠 Optimize Algorithm Complexity: Understand how to measure and optimize time and space complexity using Big O notation.
• ♻️ Work with Recursion: Implement recursive solutions to traverse through boxes and keys efficiently.
• 📚 Use Queues and Stacks: Understand when to use data structures such as queues and stacks for breadth-first and depth-first search algorithms.
• ⚡ Utilize Set Operations: Efficiently track visited boxes and available keys using sets.

📂 Project Structure

This project includes the following:

Task 0: Lockboxes

• File: 0-lockboxes.py
• Description: Implement the canUnlockAll method, which determines if all boxes can be opened based on the keys found in each box.
  • Prototype: def canUnlockAll(boxes)
  • Input: boxes is a list of lists, where each inner list represents a box containing keys to other boxes.
  • Output: Return True if all boxes can be opened, False otherwise.

🛠️ Example

#!/usr/bin/python3
canUnlockAll = __import__('0-lockboxes').canUnlockAll

boxes = [[1], [2], [3], [4], []]
print(canUnlockAll(boxes))  # True

boxes = [[1, 4, 6], [2], [0, 4, 1], [5, 6, 2], [3], [4, 1], [6]]
print(canUnlockAll(boxes))  # True

boxes = [[1, 4], [2], [0, 4, 1], [3], [], [4, 1], [5, 6]]
print(canUnlockAll(boxes))  # False

📚 Resources

Read or Watch:

• 📘 Python Lists (Python Official Documentation)
• 🎥 Graph Theory Basics (Khan Academy)
• 📚 Big O Notation (GeeksforGeeks)
• 🧠 Recursion in Python (Real Python)
• 📦 Python Queue and Stack (GeeksforGeeks)
• 🔗 Python Sets (Python Official Documentation)

⚙️ Setup Instructions

To get started with this project, follow these steps:

1. Install Python:

   • Make sure you have Python 3.4.3 or later installed on your system. If not, you can install it using the following command:

     sudo apt-get update
     sudo apt-get install python3

2. Clone the repository:

   • Clone this project to your local machine:

     git clone https://github.com/Alogyn/alx-interview.git
     cd alx-interview/0x01-lockboxes

3. Make the script executable:

   • Ensure that all your Python scripts are executable:

     chmod u+x *.py

4. Run the code:

   • You can test the code by running:

     ./main_0.py

🧑‍💻 Requirements

• Your code should be documented.
• Your code must follow the PEP 8 style guidelines (version 1.7.x).
• All your files should be executable.

Environment:

• All scripts will be interpreted/compiled on Ubuntu 20.04 LTS using Python 3.4.3.

📜 License

This project is licensed under the terms of the MIT License.

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