Jump Game Problem in DSA Typescript - Build from Scratch

Jump Game Problem

📖 Scenario: Imagine you are playing a video game where you need to jump across platforms to reach the end. Each platform lets you jump a certain maximum number of steps forward. You want to check if it is possible to reach the last platform starting from the first one.

🎯 Goal: Build a program that checks if you can jump from the first platform to the last platform using the maximum jump lengths given for each platform.

📋 What You'll Learn

Create an array called platforms with exact values representing maximum jump lengths.

Create a variable called maxReach to track the farthest platform reachable.

Use a for loop with variable i to iterate over platforms and update maxReach.

Print "Can reach the last platform" if the last platform is reachable, otherwise print "Cannot reach the last platform".

💡 Why This Matters

🌍 Real World

This problem models situations where you need to check if a path or sequence of steps is possible given constraints, such as in games, robotics, or network routing.

💼 Career

Understanding this problem helps in software engineering roles that involve algorithmic thinking, problem solving, and optimization.

1

Create the platforms array

Create an array called platforms with these exact values: [3, 2, 1, 0, 4] representing the maximum jump lengths from each platform.

DSA Typescript

# Your code here

Hint

Use const platforms = [3, 2, 1, 0, 4]; to create the array.

2

Create maxReach variable

Create a variable called maxReach and set it to 0 to track the farthest platform reachable.

DSA Typescript

const platforms = [3, 2, 1, 0, 4];
# Your code here

Hint

Use let maxReach = 0; to create the variable.

3

Implement the jump logic

Use a for loop with variable i to iterate over platforms. Inside the loop, check if i is greater than maxReach. If yes, break the loop. Otherwise, update maxReach to the maximum of maxReach and i + platforms[i].

DSA Typescript

const platforms = [3, 2, 1, 0, 4];
let maxReach = 0;
# Your code here

Hint

Use a for loop and update maxReach inside it. Stop if current index is beyond maxReach.

4

Print if last platform is reachable

Print "Can reach the last platform" if maxReach is greater than or equal to platforms.length - 1. Otherwise, print "Cannot reach the last platform".

DSA Typescript

const platforms = [3, 2, 1, 0, 4];
let maxReach = 0;
for (let i = 0; i  maxReach) {
        break;
    }
    maxReach = Math.max(maxReach, i + platforms[i]);
}
# Your code here

Hint

Use an if statement to compare maxReach with platforms.length - 1 and print the correct message.