Battleships in a Board LeetCode Solution

Last updated on January 13th, 2025 at 09:34 pm

Here, we see a Battleships in a Board LeetCode Solution. This Leetcode problem is solved using different approaches in many programming languages, such as C++, Java, JavaScript, Python, etc.

List of all LeetCode Solution

Topics

Array

Companies

Microsoft

Level of Question

Medium

Battleships in a Board LeetCode Solution

Battleships in a Board LeetCode Solution

1. Problem Statement

Given an m x n matrix board where each cell is a battleship ‘X’ or empty ‘.’, return the number of the battleships on board.

Battleships can only be placed horizontally or vertically on board. In other words, they can only be made of the shape 1 x k (1 row, k columns) or k x 1 (k rows, 1 column), where k can be of any size. At least one horizontal or vertical cell separates between two battleships (i.e., there are no adjacent battleships).

Example 1:

battelship grid

Input: board = [[“X”,”.”,”.”,”X”],[“.”,”.”,”.”,”X”],[“.”,”.”,”.”,”X”]]
Output: 2

Example 2:
Input: board = [[“.”]]
Output: 0

2. Coding Pattern Used in Solution

The coding pattern used in this code is “Islands”. This pattern is commonly used to solve problems where you need to count or identify distinct groups or clusters in a 2D grid. In this case, the code is counting distinct battleships on a board, where battleships are represented as contiguous ‘X’ characters.

3. Code Implementation in Different Languages

3.1 Battleships in a Board C++

struct Solution {
    int countBattleships(vector<vector<char>>& board) {
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < board.size(); i++)
            for (int j = 0; j < board[0].size(); j++)
                if ('X' == board[i][j] && (!i || '.' == board[i - 1][j]) && (!j || '.' == board[i][j - 1]))
                    ans++;
        return ans;
    }
};

3.2 Battleships in a Board Java

class Solution {
    public int countBattleships(char[][] board) {
        if (board == null) {
            throw new IllegalArgumentException("Input is null");
        }
        if (board.length == 0 || board[0].length == 0) {
            return 0;
        }
        int rows = board.length;
        int cols = board[0].length;
        int count = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < rows; i++) {
            for (int j = 0; j < cols; j++) {
                if (board[i][j] == 'X'
						&& (j == cols - 1 || board[i][j + 1] == '.')
                        && (i == rows - 1 || board[i + 1][j] == '.')) {
                    count++;
                }
            }
        }
        return count;
    }
}

3.3 Battleships in a Board JavaScript

var countBattleships = function(board) {
    let count = 0;
    for (let i = 0; i < board.length; i++) {
        for (let j = 0; j < board[i].length; j++) {
            if (board[i][j] === 'X' && board[i][j-1] !== 'X' && (!board[i-1] || board[i-1][j] !== 'X')) count++;
        }
    }
    return count;
};

3.4 Battleships in a Board Python

class Solution(object):
    def countBattleships(self, board):
        count = 0 
        for i, row in enumerate(board):
            for j, cell in enumerate(row):
                if cell == "X":
                    if (i == 0 or board[i - 1][j] == ".") and\
                       (j == 0 or board[i][j - 1] == "."):
                            count += 1
        return count

4. Time and Space Complexity

Time ComplexitySpace Complexity
C++O(m * n)O(1)
JavaO(m * n)O(1)
JavaScriptO(m * n)O(1)
PythonO(m * n)O(1)
  • The code is efficient as it processes each cell only once.
  • It avoids unnecessary checks by leveraging the conditions for the first cell of a battleship.
  • The implementation is consistent across all languages, with minor syntactic differences.
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