Count palindrome substrings in a string
Company: Meta
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: Medium
Interview Round: Technical Screen
Given a lowercase ASCII string s, count the number of substrings that are palindromes and return the count. Implement an O(n^
2) solution using expand-around-center, explaining how you handle even-length centers and repeated characters. Then outline how a linear-time approach would work conceptually. Analyze time and space complexity, and discuss edge cases (empty string, single-character string, all identical characters).
Quick Answer: This question evaluates proficiency in string algorithms, algorithmic design, and complexity analysis by targeting palindromic substring counting, string manipulation, and conceptual linear-time techniques.