Thanks a lot!

you saved my day

The cat can move the given number of moves up, down, left or right, but not diagonally.

It's even written in bold, please read the description before raising issues ...

I think there's a problem with random tests. Some of them have wrong output.

For example this one:

moves: 9
........C.  
..........  
..........  
..........  
..........  
...m......

A test says that we cannot catch mouse within 9 moves. But it's not true. If we move horizontally we are able to catch mouse in 5 moves.

Here's how to do that:

// ........C. => 9
// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ...m...... => 4

// ..........
// .......C.. => 8
// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ...m...... => 4

// ..........
// ..........
// ......C... => 7
// ..........
// ..........
// ...m...... => 4

// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// .....C.... => 6
// ..........
// ...m...... => 4

// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ....C..... => 5
// ...m...... => 4

// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ..........
// ...C...... => 4 = 4 => Caught!

For each move we take 9 steps and have to make 5 moves in total to reach the mouse.

.repeat also depends on n so time complexity is O(nlogn)

I wouldn't recommend using bitwise operators in production code they are really hard to understand and debug. I had hard time debugging production code that utilized bitwise operators.

There's a way to make it one line tho :)
One line solutions are usually not the best ones (in terms of performance and readability) but people still upvote them because they look cool

Finally a O(n) solution!

I never worry about big O when doing these.

Isn't it the whole point of these coding tasks — to find a performant solution (in terms of big O)?

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