157. Read N Characters Given Read4

https://leetcode.com/problems/read-n-characters-given-read4/description/

The API: int read4(char *buf) reads 4 characters at a time from a file.

The return value is the actual number of characters read. For example, it returns 3 if there is only 3 characters left in the file.

By using the read4 API, implement the function int read(char *buf, int n) that reads n characters from the file.

Example 1:

Input: buf = "abc", n = 4
Output: "abc"
Explanation: The actual number of characters read is 3, which is "abc".

Example 2:

Input: buf = "abcde", n = 5 
Output: "abcde"

Note:
The read function will only be called once for each test case.

# The read4 API is already defined for you.
# @param buf, a list of characters
# @return an integer
# def read4(buf):

class Solution(object):
    def read(self, buf, n):
        buf4 = [""] * 4  # read4 buffer 
        count = 0

        while n > 0:
            now = min(n, read4(buf4))
            if now == 0:  # no more to read
                break
            buf[count:count+now+1] = buf4  # copy from buf4 to buf
            count += now
            n -= now
        return count