TopCoder problem "DayPlanner" used in TCO05 Qual 5/10 (Division I Level One)



Problem Statement

    You will be given a list of tasks that need to be completed today. Each element of tasks will have the form (quotes for clarity) "HH:MM TASK" where HH is between 0 and 23 inclusive, MM is between 0 and 59 inclusive, and TASK is composed of letters ('A'-'Z', 'a'-'z'). Both HH and MM are 2-digit numbers. You will return a String formatted as follows (quotes for clarity): "FirstTask-LastTask". Here FirstTask is the earliest TASK in tasks and LastTask is the latest.
 

Definition

    
Class:DayPlanner
Method:getEnds
Parameters:String[]
Returns:String
Method signature:String getEnds(String[] tasks)
(be sure your method is public)
    
 

Constraints

-tasks will contain between 2 and 50 elements inclusive.
-Each element of tasks will contain between 7 and 50 characters inclusive.
-Each element of tasks will be formatted in the way described in the problem statement.
-No two elements of tasks will have the same time.
 

Examples

0)
    
{"00:00 FirstTask","10:00 SecondTask"}
Returns: "FirstTask-SecondTask"
FirstTask occurs as early as possible. SecondTask occurs 10 hours later.
1)
    
{"00:00 Which","00:01 Is","00:02 Which"}
Returns: "Which-Which"
2)
    
{"00:02 Which","00:01 Is","00:00 Which"}
Returns: "Which-Which"
3)
    
{"00:10 A","01:09 B","02:08 C"}
Returns: "A-C"
4)
    
{"12:00 B","23:59 C","00:00 A"}
Returns: "A-C"

Problem url:

http://www.topcoder.com/stat?c=problem_statement&pm=4637

Problem stats url:

http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=ProblemDetail&rd=8024&pm=4637

Writer:

AdminBrett

Testers:

PabloGilberto , lbackstrom , Olexiy

Problem categories:

Simple Search, Iteration