Linked Lists and Caches

Campus and experienced hires both get linked list questions in Wells Fargo technical rounds. The questions are classics, but the setting makes them harder. In one round, the interviewer had the candidate share a screen and type in Notepad, so no compiler was there to catch a lost pointer.

So draw the list before you touch it. Three or four boxes on paper show which pointer you'd lose. Say each assignment out loud as you write it, and run a two-node list by hand at the end. Pointer bugs stay quiet until a short input exposes them, so try the one-node case on each problem too.

Two of the three problems here work on a plain list, with in-place pointer changes and a cycle check. The third pairs a list with a hash map so that every operation runs in constant time.

Wells FargoPremium lesson · Coding round

The 3 Wells Fargo problems are below.

1. 1A Premium questionCoding · Easy
2. 2A Premium questionCoding · Medium
3. 3A Premium questionCoding · Medium

Each with hints, the follow-up and a tested solution.

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