Core DSA

SAP's coding bar is not built to filter for competitive-programming range. The online assessment pairs its multiple-choice section with two coders that sit in the easy-to-medium band, and the live rounds run one or two problems in the same band on a shared editor. No single question dominates the way a signature problem does at some companies. The set is wide and shallow: arrays, strings, hashmaps, a stack or two, some linked lists and trees, and the occasional greedy or DP problem wrapped in a paragraph of story.

That changes what you optimize for. The people running these rounds have said outright that they want readable code over clever code. They watch how you reason, ask clarifying questions, and narrate your approach, more than whether you reach the optimal solution on the first pass. A working brute force you can explain, then tighten, clears the round. A dense one-liner that you cannot walk through does not. The three problems below sit dead-center in what SAP asks, and each hides a small trap that separates a clean pass from a near miss.