LeetCode62. Unique Paths

A robot is located at the top-left corner of a m x n grid (marked 'Start' in the diagram below).

The robot can only move either down or right at any point in time. The robot is trying to reach the bottom-right corner of the grid (marked 'Finish' in the diagram below).

How many possible unique paths are there?

Above is a 3 x 7 grid. How many possible unique paths are there?

Note: m and n will be at most 100.

• Total Accepted: 125270
• Total Submissions: 315617
• Difficulty: Medium
• Contributors: Admin

题目大意是限定机器人每次只能往右或者往下走，求存在多少个不同的路径，能让机器人从左上角走到右下角。

由于机器人只能往右或者往下走，所以整个路径的长度是左上角跟右下角的街区距离，即m+n-2。而且路径中必然有m-1次往右走以及n-1次往下走。

给路径中每一步编号为1，2，3...m+n-2，不同路径之间的差别是选择哪几部往下走，因此共有C(m+n-2,n-1)种路径。

考虑到直接用公式计算C(m+n-2,n-1)的话，会出现(m+n-2)!这样比较大的中间结果。

为了避免溢出，使用公式C(n,m+1)=C(n,m)*(n-m)/(m+1)进行迭代计算。

代码如下：

class Solution {
public:
    int uniquePaths(int m, int n) {
        if(n>m)
            swap(m,n);
        if(n==1)
            return 1;
        m--;
        n--;
        
        long res=m+n;
        for(int i=1;i<n;i++)
            res=res*(m+n-i)/(i+1);
        return res;
    }
};

Submission Details

61 / 61 test cases passed.	Status: Accepted
Runtime: 3 ms	Submitted: 0 minutes ago