To solve the problem of calculating the score of a string, which is defined as the sum of the absolute differences between the ASCII values of adjacent characters, we can follow these steps.
- Iterate Through the String: Loop through the string from the first character to the second-to-last character.
- Calculate ASCII Differences: For each pair of adjacent characters, calculate the absolute difference between their ASCII values.
- Sum the Differences: Accumulate the sum of these differences.
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Time complexity:
$O(n)$ , where$n$ is the length of the string. We iterate through the string once. -
Space complexity:
$O(1)$ , as we use a constant amount of extra space for the score variable.