Given two positive integers n and k, the binary string Sn is formed as follows:
S1 = "0"
Si = Si - 1 + "1" + reverse(invert(Si - 1)) for i > 1
Where + denotes the concatenation operation, reverse(x) returns the reversed string x, and invert(x) inverts all the bits in x (0 changes to 1 and 1 changes to 0).
For example, the first four strings in the above sequence are:
S1 = "0"
S2 = "011"
S3 = "0111001"
S4 = "011100110110001"
Return the kth bit in Sn. It is guaranteed that k is valid for the given n.
Example 1:
Input: n = 3, k = 1 Output: "0" Explanation: S3 is "0111001". The 1st bit is "0".
Example 2:
Input: n = 4, k = 11 Output: "1" Explanation: S4 is "011100110110001". The 11th bit is "1".
- Base case: When n = 1, the binary string is "0"
- Find the length of the current string Sn, which is 2^n - 1
- Find the middle position
- If k is the middle position, return '1'
- If k is in the first half, find the bit in Sn-1
- If k is in the second half, find the bit in Sn-1 and invert it
- The overall time complexity is
O(n)
because we recursively reduce the problem size with each step by one level.
- The space complexity is
O(n)
due to the recursion stack.