Code RoomMerge stone piles
HardPrep Room Coding #1049

Merge stone piles

CodingAlgorithms & data structuresSenior–Staff~35 min

You have `stones` piles in a row. Repeatedly merge two ADJACENT piles into one; the cost of a merge is the sum of the two piles' sizes. Keep merging until a single pile remains. Return the minimum possible total merge cost. A single pile (or empty) costs 0.

Implement
min_merge_cost(stones: list[int]) → int
Examples
in[[4,3,3,4]]out28
What a strong answer looks like

State your approach and its time/space complexity out loud before you optimize. Handle the edge cases (empty input, duplicates, overflow), and say why you chose this over the brute force. Green tests are the floor, not the grade.

0:00 of about 35 min
InputExpectedGot
[[4,3,3,4]]28not run yetsample