Score of a String

Problem Description

You are given a string s. The score of a string is defined as the sum of the absolute difference between the ASCII values of adjacent characters. Return the score of s.

Key Insights

• The score is calculated based on adjacent characters in the string.
• We need to compute the absolute differences of their ASCII values.
• The final score is the sum of all these differences.

Space and Time Complexity

Time Complexity: O(n), where n is the length of the string, since we need to iterate through the string once. Space Complexity: O(1), as we are using a constant amount of extra space.

Solution

To solve this problem, we will use a simple iterative approach:

1. Initialize a variable to keep track of the score.
2. Loop through the string from the first character to the second-to-last character.
3. For each character, calculate the absolute difference between its ASCII value and that of the next character.
4. Add this difference to the score.
5. Return the total score after processing all adjacent pairs.

The main data structure used here is a simple integer to accumulate the score.

Code Solutions