【Jason's_ACM_解题报告】Cutting Sticks

Cutting Sticks

You have to cut a wood stick into pieces. The most affordable company, The Analog Cutting Machinery, Inc. (ACM), charges money according to the length of the stick being cut. Their procedure of work requires that they only make one cut at a time.
It is easy to notice that different selections in the order of cutting can led to different prices. For example, consider a stick of length 10 meters that has to be cut at 2, 4 and 7 meters from one end. There are several choices. One can be cutting first at 2, then at 4, then at 7. This leads to a price of 10 + 8 + 6 = 24 because the first stick was of 10 meters, the resulting of 8 and the last one of 6. Another choice could be cutting at 4, then at 2, then at 7. This would lead to a price of 10 + 4 + 6 = 20, which is a better price.
Your boss trusts your computer abilities to find out the minimum cost for cutting a given stick.


Input
The input will consist of several input cases. The first line of each test case will contain a positive number l that represents the length of the stick to be cut. You can assume l < 1000. The next line will contain the number n (n < 50) of cuts to be made.
The next line consists of n positive numbers ci (0 < ci < l) representing the places where the cuts have to be done, given in strictly increasing order.
An input case with l = 0 will represent the end of the input.


Output
You have to print the cost of the optimal solution of the cutting problem, that is the minimum cost of cutting the given stick. Format the output as shown below.


Sample Input
100
3
25 50 75
10
4
4 5 7 8
0


Sample Output
The minimum cutting is 200.
The minimum cutting is 22.

这是一道最优矩阵链乘的变型题，在此仅列出状态转移方程来：

设dp[i][j]为切割长度为A[j]-A[i]的小木棍所需要付出的最少费用，状态转移方程为dp[i][j]=dp[i][k]+dp[k][j]+A[j]-A[i](i<k<j)。注意递推木棍长度，而非起始点，因为大木棍的最优值依赖于小木棍。

边界为dp[i][i+1]=0。最终结果为dp[0][n+1]（n为切割点数量）。

附代码如下：

#include<cstdio> 
#include<cstring>

#include<algorithm> 

using namespace std;

#define MAXN (50+5)
#define OO (0x7fffffff)

int L,n,A[MAXN],dp[MAXN][MAXN];

int main(){
	while(scanf("%d",&L)==1&&L){
		scanf("%d",&n);
		for(int i=1;i<=n;i++)scanf("%d",&A[i]);
		A[0]=0;A[n+1]=L;
		
		memset(dp,0,sizeof(dp));
		for(int len=2;len<=n+1;len++){
			for(int i=0;i+len<=n+1;i++){
				int j=i+len;
				dp[i][j]=OO;
				for(int k=i+1;k<j;k++){
					dp[i][j]=min(dp[i][j],dp[i][k]+dp[k][j]+A[j]-A[i]);
				}
			}
		}
		printf("The minimum cutting is %d.\n",dp[0][n+1]);
	}
	return 0;
}