1 1 2x3 1 2x2 1 4 - Introduction

This is a coding challenge where you will be given a series of numbers in a specific format "1 1 2x3 1 2x2 1 4 - any number". Your task is to write a program that can parse this input string and convert it into a meaningful output.

The input string consists of a series of numbers separated by spaces. Each number may be preceded by a multiplier in the format of "NxM" where N is the multiplier and M is the number of times to repeat the following number. For example, "2x3" means to repeat the number 2, three times.

Your program needs to parse this input and produce an output in the format of a list of numbers. The output list should contain each number repeated the number of times specified by the input.

For example, given the input string "1 1 2x3 1 2x2 1 4 - 5", the output list should be [1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5].

Code snippet

def parse_input_string(input_str):
    output_list = []

    # split input string into a list of strings
    input_list = input_str.split()

    for i in range(len(input_list)):
        # check if current input is a multiplier
        if "x" in input_list[i]:
            multiplier, count = input_list[i].split("x")
            count = int(count)
            # repeat the next number by the specified count
            for j in range(count):
                output_list.append(int(input_list[i+1]) * int(multiplier))
        else:
            output_list.append(int(input_list[i]))

    return output_list
    
# example usage
input_str = "1 1 2x3 1 2x2 1 4 - 5"
output_list = parse_input_string(input_str)
print(output_list) # [1, 1, 2, 2, 2, 1, 2, 2, 4, 5]

This code snippet shows a possible solution in Python for parsing the input string and producing the output list. The parse_input_string() function takes the input string as argument and returns the output list. It splits the input string into a list of strings, loop through the list to check if each input item is a multiplier, and repeats the following number by the specified count if it is. The final output list is returned.