Score from Adjacent ASCII Differences
Company: Google
Role: Software Engineer
Category: Coding & Algorithms
Difficulty: easy
Interview Round: Other
# Score from Adjacent ASCII Differences
Given a string `s`, define its score as the sum of the absolute differences between the ASCII values of every pair of adjacent characters.
Return that score. Each adjacent pair contributes once, and the last character is not paired with the first.
### Examples
**Example 1**
```text
Input: s = "azba"
Output: 50
```
The ASCII values are `97,122,98,97`. The adjacent contributions are `25,24,1`, giving a total of 50.
**Example 2**
```text
Input: s = "cddf"
Output: 3
```
The ASCII values are `99,100,100,102`. The contributions are `1,0,2`, giving a total of three. Equal neighboring characters contribute zero.
### Constraints
- `2 <= s.length <= 100`.
- `s` contains only lowercase English letters.
### Clarifying Questions
- Are all pairs of characters compared? No; only neighbors in the original string.
- Does a decrease in ASCII value contribute a negative number? No; take the absolute difference for every pair.
- Is the string sorted first? No; use its given order.
- Is there a contribution between the last and first characters? No.
### C++ Interface
```cpp
class Solution {
public:
int scoreOfString(string s) {
}
};
```
### Reasoning Checkpoints
- Apply the exact adjacent-pair score definition without omitting or duplicating a contribution.
- Handle equal characters and increases or decreases in ASCII value.
- Justify the result type and resource costs under the stated bounds.
```hint Sum the consecutive differences
For each position after the first, convert its character and the preceding character to integers before subtracting. Add the nonnegative magnitude of that difference to the score.
```
Overview: Compute the sum of absolute ASCII differences between adjacent lowercase characters, preserving order and including zero differences.