Count number of binary strings without consecutive 1’s
Given a positive integer N, count all possible distinct binary strings of length N such that there are no consecutive 1’s.
Examples:
Input: N = 2 Output: 3 // The 3 strings are 00, 01, 10 Input: N = 3 Output: 5 // The 5 strings are 000, 001, 010, 100, 101
This problem can be solved using Dynamic Programming. Let a[i] be the number of binary strings of length i which do not contain any two consecutive 1’s and which end in 0. Similarly, let b[i] be the number of such strings which end in 1. We can append either 0 or 1 to a string ending in 0, but we can only append 0 to a string ending in 1. This yields the recurrence relation:
a[i] = a[i - 1] + b[i - 1] b[i] = a[i - 1]
The base cases of above recurrence are a[1] = b[1] = 1. The total number of strings of length i is just a[i] + b[i].
Following is C++ implementation of above solution. In the following implementation, indexes start from 0. So a[i] represents the number of binary strings for input length i+1. Similarly, b[i] represents binary strings for input length i+1.
// C++ program to count all distinct binary strings
// without two consecutive 1's
#include <iostream>
using
namespace
std;
int
countStrings(
int
n)
{
int
a[n], b[n];
a[0] = b[0] = 1;
for
(
int
i = 1; i < n; i++)
{
a[i] = a[i-1] + b[i-1];
b[i] = a[i-1];
}
return
a[n-1] + b[n-1];
}
// Driver program to test above functions
int
main()
{
cout << countStrings(3) << endl;
return
0;
}