【LeetCode 1000】 Minimum Cost to Merge Stones

题目描述

There are N piles of stones arranged in a row. The i-th pile has stones[i] stones.

A move consists of merging exactly K consecutive piles into one pile, and the cost of this move is equal to the total number of stones in these K piles.

Find the minimum cost to merge all piles of stones into one pile. If it is impossible, return -1.

Example 1:

Input: stones = [3,2,4,1], K = 2
Output: 20
Explanation: 
We start with [3, 2, 4, 1].
We merge [3, 2] for a cost of 5, and we are left with [5, 4, 1].
We merge [4, 1] for a cost of 5, and we are left with [5, 5].
We merge [5, 5] for a cost of 10, and we are left with [10].
The total cost was 20, and this is the minimum possible.

Example 2:

Input: stones = [3,2,4,1], K = 3
Output: -1
Explanation: After any merge operation, there are 2 piles left, and we can't merge anymore.  So the task is impossible.

Example 3:

Input: stones = [3,5,1,2,6], K = 3
Output: 25
Explanation: 
We start with [3, 5, 1, 2, 6].
We merge [5, 1, 2] for a cost of 8, and we are left with [3, 8, 6].
We merge [3, 8, 6] for a cost of 17, and we are left with [17].
The total cost was 25, and this is the minimum possible.

Note:

1 <= stones.length <= 30
2 <= K <= 30
1 <= stones[i] <= 100

思路

动态规划。dp[i][j]表示该区间移动到最后，需要的代价。
注意到，只有在区间长度n满足 (n-1) % (K-1) == 0 的时候，该区间能移动为一堆。其它长度时，最后能合并到的堆数为 (n-1) % (K-1) + 1。当区间能移动为一堆时，合并为一堆。代价为所有元素之和。

代码

class Solution {
   
public:
    int mergeStones(vector<int>&a