The government of a small but important country has decided that the alphabet needs to be streamlined and reordered. Uppercase letters will be eliminated. They will issue a royal decree in the form of a String of B and A characters. The first character in the decree specifies whether a must come ( B )Before b in the new alphabet or ( A )After b . The second character determines the relative placement of b and c , etc. So, for example, "BAA" means that a must come Before b , b must come After c , and c must come After d .
Any letters beyond these requirements are to be excluded, so if the decree specifies k comparisons then the new alphabet will contain the first k+1 lowercase letters of the current alphabet.
Create a class Alphabet that contains the method choices that takes the decree as input and returns the number of possible new alphabets that conform to the decree. If more than 1,000,000,000 are possible, return -1.
Definition
Thinking in C++ patiently and methodically explores the issues of when and how to use inlines, references, operator overloading, inheritance and dynamic objects, as well as advanced topics such as the proper use of templates, exceptions and multiple inheritance. The entire effort is woven in a fabric that includes Eckel’s own philosophy of object and program design. A must for every C++ developer’s bookshelf, Thinking in C++ is the one C++ book you must have if you’re doing serious development with C++.
