Seeking helps in explaination of syntax for var[x[n]]

November 6, 2021

Can someone help me to understand below syntax… thanks in advance.

class Solution {
public:
int lengthOfLongestSubstring(string s) {
    const int n = s.length(); 
    int ans = 0; //set a var as answer;
        for(int i = 0; i < n; ++i){
            vector <int> seen(128); 
            int j = i;
                while(j < n && !seen[s[j]]) <----here
                seen[s[j++]]=1;             <----here
                ans=max(ans, j - i);        <----here
  }
    return ans;
 }
};

wasn’t sure what the syntax means !seen[s[j]]
same as this seen[s[j++]]=1
also don’t know why i can be subtracted by j…

>Solution :

Case 1

s[j]

The above means the element at index j of the string named s.

Case 2

seen[s[j]]

The above means the element at index s[j] of variable named seen.

Case 3

seen[s[j++]]=1;

For the above you have to know about the post-increment operator. So lets say we have:

int var = 0;
std::cout << var++ <<std::end; //this will print 0

The ++ in var++ means we are incrementing the value of var by 1 so that it now becomes 1, but var++ returns the old value of the variable var which is why we get 0 as the output.

Now lets come back to:

seen[s[j++]]=1;

The above means the element at index s[j++] of the variable named seen. But note j++ will do 2 things: First it will increment j by 1 and second it will return the old value of j. So s[j++] essentially means the element at index j of the string named s meanwhile the value of j is also incremented by 1. Thus as a whole, you’re assigning a value of 1 to the element at index s[j] of the variable named seen meanwhile also increment the value of j by one.