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1000. Minimum Cost to Merge Stones

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

Difficulty:

Hard

Lock:

Normal

Company:

Amazon Google

Problem Solution

1000-Minimum-Cost-to-Merge-Stones

All Problems:

Link to All Problems
All contents and pictures on this website come from the Internet and are updated regularly every week. They are for personal study and research only, and should not be used for commercial purposes. Thank you for your cooperation.