MediumDSA & Computer Science

Exam hall seating arrangement

Seat students from different branches so that no two students of the same branch sit next to each other.

Skills: Python / C++, sorting, greedy algorithms, CSV

A real headache for exam coordinators every semester

The problem

Before every exam, the coordinator arranges seats in each hall so that students of the same branch do not sit side by side. Doing this by hand for hundreds of students takes hours.

Each hall has R rows and C benches per row. The input is a list of roll numbers with their branch (for example CSE, MECH, CIVIL, ENTC).

Your solution should

01Read students (roll number, branch) from a CSV file and the hall size
02Fill seats row by row so that left/right neighbours are from different branches
03If it is impossible (one branch has too many students), say so and seat the rest as well as possible
04Print the seating chart for each hall and save it to a CSV file
05Keep roll numbers of the same branch in ascending order

Stuck? Show hints (3)

Group students by branch and sort each group
Greedy: at every seat, pick the branch with the most students left that is different from the previous seat
A max-heap (priority queue) keyed by remaining count makes the greedy step easy

Exam hall seating arrangement

The problem

Your solution should

Exam hall seating arrangement

The problem

Your solution should

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