Because when you access inputString[0] you get the unicode value of the first character so what he does is to substract the value of the character 0, because let's say "0" has a value of 32, then, 1 has a value of 33, and so on. So, when you substract 33 - 32 you get 1

The mender role typically involves:

• addressing kata issues
• fixing kata issues
• kata quality & maintenance management
• reviewing beta kata's and translations

What's a 'mender' @dfhwze?

As noted below this is a regular graph reachability problem with no real performance requirements, and there're already many such katas available.

For examples see the Example Test Cases

This is not the right way to explain a task.

What if i wanna return the same input?

The description obfuscates this, but it turns out this is just a generic graph search kata like countless before it.
If the point of it is to enforce solving with a specific, efficient algorithm, then the performance tests need to be much much stricter. As it stands, a standard BFS implementation solves this in ~5s.

That's exactly why we should translate the easy kata's to as much languages as possible :)

I can relate strongly. Codewars is great for learning new languages. And the trivial katas are perfekt to take a sneek peek into a random language. Solved at least one on with my phone. No keyboard or IDE needed. Installing a full IDE with testframework and all often takes a lot longer than doing a easy kata.

I'm not a beginner programmer, but I am learning Python, so seeing the different solutions to simple kata like this is actually quite helpful. I also love creative and humorous solutions, so nice job!!

Fancy!