House Robber II
Detailed guide and Python implementation for the 'House Robber II' problem.
1. Concept Overview
The 'House Robber II' problem is a key challenge in the 1D DP section.
This implementation focuses on medium-level logic in Python.
We prioritize technical accuracy and code readability in our provided solutions.
2. Real-World Applications
3. Visual Intuition
Visualizing the logic flow for House Robber II.
4. Prerequisites
5. Step-by-Step Thinking
1. Understand the problem
Read the problem statement for House Robber II carefully.
2. Formulate brute force
Draft a simple iterative solution.
3. Identify inefficiency
Look for redundant calculations.
4. Optimize search path
Use hashing or sorting to speed up the process.
5. Final Implementation
Clean up the code for production standards.
Problem Statement
You are a professional robber planning to rob houses along a street. Each house has a certain amount of money stashed. All houses at this place are arranged in a circle. That means the first house is the neighbor of the last one. Meanwhile, adjacent houses have a security system connected, and it will automatically contact the police if two adjacent houses were broken into on the same night.
Given an integer array nums representing the amount of money of each house, return the maximum amount of money you can rob tonight without alerting the police.
Write a function rob(nums: List[int]) -> int.
- •1 <= len(nums) <= 100
- •0 <= nums[i] <= 1000
Examples
nums = [2,3,2]
3
You cannot rob house 1 and house 3 because they are adjacent in the circular layout.
nums = [1,2,3,1]
4
Rob house 1 (money = 1) and rob house 3 (money = 3). Total = 4.
Need a Hint?
Edge Cases to Watch
- Empty input structures
- Single element inputs
- Large numerical bounds
Ready to Solve?
Open the problem in PyRun's browser-based Python editor. Your code runs fully offline — no server required.
Interview Insights & Variations
Complexity Analysis Breakdown
Why Time: Directly evaluates all possibilities.
Why Space: Uses standard local memory.
Why Time: Optimized paths reduce total operations.
Why Space: May trade memory for speed.
Optimized Solution Python Code
Optimized Solution Python Code
def rob_opt(nums):
if len(nums) == 1: return nums[0]
def solve(arr):
rob1, rob2 = 0, 0
for n in arr:
tmp = max(n + rob1, rob2); rob1 = rob2; rob2 = tmp
return rob2
return max(solve(nums[1:]), solve(nums[:-1]))Brute Force Code (Spoiler Guarded)
Brute Force Code (Spoiler Guarded)
def rob_brute(nums):
if len(nums) == 1: return nums[0]
def solve(arr):
rob1, rob2 = 0, 0
for n in arr:
temp = max(n + rob1, rob2); rob1 = rob2; rob2 = temp
return rob2
return max(solve(nums[1:]), solve(nums[:-1]))Algorithm Pattern Checklist
When dealing with 1D DP data patterns.
Core Prerequisites
Revision Key Notes
Common Mistakes & Pitfalls
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