Count Enemies

Little Arjit is the leader of a marvelous fighting army. His team is very good at fighting against all their enemies. But like Hound from Game of Thrones, Little Arjit and his entire team is scared of fire. When they see fire, they feel threatened, and scared like a little child, and don’t even mind giving up from a fight.

Now, you’re given the location of the army men of Little Arjit, their enemies, and fire in a pathway. You’ve got to figure out how many enemies will survive after the massacre done by Little Arjit and his army.

Let’s say Little Arjit and his army is denoted by ‘X’, all their enemies are denoted by ‘O’, and fire is denoted as ‘*’

Here’s what happens:

When an X faces an O, i.e., when X is adjacent to O, X kills O. Always. Whenever there will be an O adjacent to X, X will kill O. The moment X faces a *, he stops, and he cannot move any further.

Given a string containing X, O, * - can you help Little Arjit figure out how many of his enemies will still survive this attack because of fire?

Example:

Input:  s = "X*OO*XX"
Output: 2

Approach

C++

#include <bits/stdc++.h>
using namespace std;

void countEnemies(string s)
{
    int n = s.size();
    if (s.size() == 1)
    {
        if (s[0] == 'O')
            cout << "1\n";
        else
            cout << "0\n";
    }
    else
    {
        int cnt = 0;
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
        {
            if (s[i] == 'X')
            {
                for (int j = i + 1; j < n; j++)
                {
                    if (s[j] == '*')
                        break;
                    else if (s[j] == 'O')
                        s[j] = '.';
                }
                for (int j = i - 1; j >= 0; j--)
                {
                    if (s[j] == '*')
                        break;
                    else if (s[j] == 'O')
                        s[j] = '.';
                }
            }
        }
        for (int i = 0; i < n; i++)
        {
            if (s[i] == 'O')
                cnt++;
        }
        cout << cnt << "\n";
    }
}
int main()
{

    string s = "X*OO*XX";

    countEnemies(s);

    return 0;
}