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You are given a list of lists where each sublist contains two integers representing distances traveled by a car on different days. Each sublist is structured as [forward_distance, backward_distance]. Write a function that calculates the total distance traveled by the car over all the days, considering both the forward and backward distances.

Clarifying Questions

  1. Input constraints:
    • Can the distances be negative or zero?
    • Is the list always guaranteed to have a forward and backward distance for each sublist?
  2. Output requirements:
    • Should the total distance be an integer or can it be a float as well?
    • Are there any requirements on handling invalid inputs?

Without additional constraints, I’ll assume:

Strategy

  1. Initialize a total distance counter to zero.
  2. Iterate through each sublist in the list of distances.
  3. For each sublist, sum the forward and backward distances and add this sum to the total distance counter.
  4. Return the total distance after processing all sublists.

The approach is straightforward and involves simple iteration and arithmetic, ensuring clarity and keeping the solution efficient.

Code

Here’s the implementation in Python:

def total_distance_traveled(distances):
    total_distance = 0
    for day in distances:
        forward_distance, backward_distance = day
        total_distance += forward_distance + backward_distance
    return total_distance

# Example usage
distances = [
    [10, 5],
    [20, 10],
    [15, 10]
]
print(total_distance_traveled(distances))  # Output: 70

Time Complexity

The time complexity of this solution is (O(n)), where (n) is the number of days (sublists) in the input list. This is because we need to iterate through each sublist exactly once to compute the total distance. The space complexity is (O(1)), since we are only using a fixed amount of extra space regardless of the input size.

You can run the code with different input examples to see the function in action and verify correctness.

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