Hackerrank - Cats and a Mouse Solution
Two cats and a mouse are at various positions on a line. You will be given their starting positions. Your task is to determine which cat will reach the mouse first, assuming the mouse doesn't move and the cats travel at equal speed. If the cats arrive at the same time, the mouse will be allowed to move and it will escape while they fight.
You are given q queries in the form of x, y, and x representing the respective positions for cats and , and for mouse . Complete the function catAndMouse to return the appropriate answer to each query, which will be printed on a new line.
- If cat A catches the mouse first, print
Cat A
. - If cat B catches the mouse first, print
Cat B
. - If both cats reach the mouse at the same time, print
Mouse C
as the two cats fight and mouse escapes.
For example, cat is at position and cat is at . If mouse is at position , it is units from cat and unit from cat . Cat will catch the mouse.
Function Description
Complete the catAndMouse function in the editor below. It should return one of the three strings as described.
catAndMouse has the following parameter(s):
- x: an integer, Cat 's position
- y: an integer, Cat 's position
- z: an integer, Mouse 's position
Input Format
The first line contains a single integer, , denoting the number of queries.
Each of the subsequent lines contains three space-separated integers describing the respective values of (cat 's location), (cat 's location), and (mouse 's location).
Constraints
Output Format
For each query, return Cat A
if cat catches the mouse first, Cat B
if cat catches the mouse first, or Mouse C
if the mouse escapes.
Sample Input 0
2
1 2 3
1 3 2
Sample Output 0
Cat B
Mouse C
Explanation 0
Query 0: The positions of the cats and mouse are shown below:
Cat will catch the mouse first, so we print Cat B
on a new line.
Query 1: In this query, cats and reach mouse at the exact same time:
Because the mouse escapes, we print Mouse C
on a new line.
Solution in Python
def catAndMouse(x, y, z):
if abs(x-z)==abs(y-z):
return "Mouse C"
elif abs(x-z)>abs(y-z):
return "Cat B"
else:
return "Cat A"
for _ in range(int(input())):
x,y,z = map(int,input().split())
print(catAndMouse(x, y, z))