Rating: -
Tags: -
Solve time: 1m 2s
Verified: yes

Solution

Problem Understanding

The problem is intentionally wrapped in a long story, but the actual computation is extremely small. The committee considers a session containing n bills. Every bill that reaches a vote receives unanimous approval, so every voted bill is passed. The second input value, f, represents a fictional amount of french fries consumed and has no effect on the result. The task is simply to output the number of bills that will be passed, which is the number of bills voted on.

The input contains two integers. The first one, n, is the number of bills considered during the session. The second one, f, is unrelated data included as part of the joke in the statement. The output must be the count of bills that pass.

The constraints are very small, with n ranging from 0 to 99 and f ranging from 0 to 20. This means any normal approach would fit easily, but the real goal is recognizing that no simulation or algorithm is required. Since the answer depends only on n, the running time should be constant.

The main edge cases come from values that might make someone accidentally introduce unnecessary logic. When there are no bills, the answer is zero because there is nothing to vote on.

For example:

Input:
0 15

Output:
0

A careless solution might assume at least one bill exists and print a positive value.

The second edge case is when the french fry count is unusual. The value of f should never change the answer.

For example:

Input:
7 0

Output:
7

A solution that tries to derive some relationship between fries and bills would fail here because the second number is completely irrelevant.

Approaches

A direct simulation would iterate over every bill, check that it receives approval, and count it. This is logically correct because every bill is guaranteed to pass. However, the simulation is unnecessary because the statement already gives the result of every vote. Even if the number of bills were extremely large, repeating the same operation for every bill would only rediscover information we already know.

The key observation is that the output is exactly the first input value. The voting process does not change the count of bills, and the additional input value does not influence anything. The entire problem reduces to reading the first integer and printing it.

Approach	Time Complexity	Space Complexity	Verdict
Brute Force	O(n)	O(1)	Accepted, but unnecessary
Optimal	O(1)	O(1)	Accepted

Algorithm Walkthrough

Read the two integers from the input. Only the first value matters because it represents the number of bills that will be voted on.
Output n directly. Every bill is guaranteed to receive unanimous approval, so the number of passed bills is unchanged.

Why it works:

The invariant behind the solution is that every bill considered in the session contributes exactly one passed bill. Since there are n bills and none can fail, the final number of passed bills remains n. The second input value never appears in this reasoning, so ignoring it cannot affect correctness.

Python Solution

import sys
input = sys.stdin.readline

n, f = map(int, input().split())
print(n)

The program reads both values because they are present in the input format, but only stores the first one for the computation. The variable f is read and intentionally unused because the problem statement defines it as irrelevant information.

There are no loops, arrays, or arithmetic transformations. This avoids unnecessary work and also avoids possible mistakes such as trying to model the voting process manually.

The input bounds are small, so integer overflow is not a concern in Python. There are also no boundary conditions involving indexing because the solution does not access any data structure.

Worked Examples

Sample 1

Input:

61 19

The algorithm only needs the number of bills.

Step	n	f	Output
Read input	61	19
Print n	61	19	61

The trace shows that the french fry count does not affect the result. All 61 bills are passed.

Sample 2

Input:

36 10

Step	n	f	Output
Read input	36	10
Print n	36	10	36

This example confirms that a different value of f still leaves the answer equal to the number of bills.

Complexity Analysis

Measure	Complexity	Explanation
Time	O(1)	The program performs only input parsing and one output operation.
Space	O(1)	Only two integer variables are stored.

The constraints are easily satisfied because the solution does not depend on the size of the input values.

Test Cases

import sys
import io

def solve(data: str) -> str:
    old_stdin = sys.stdin
    sys.stdin = io.StringIO(data)
    input = sys.stdin.readline
    n, f = map(int, input().split())
    ans = str(n)
    sys.stdin = old_stdin
    return ans

# provided samples
assert solve("61 19\n") == "61", "sample 1"
assert solve("36 10\n") == "36", "sample 2"

# custom cases
assert solve("0 20\n") == "0", "no bills"
assert solve("1 0\n") == "1", "single bill"
assert solve("99 20\n") == "99", "maximum number of bills"
assert solve("50 5\n") == "50", "different fries value ignored"

Test input	Expected output	What it validates
`0 20`	`0`	Handles the minimum number of bills.
`1 0`	`1`	Handles the smallest positive session.
`99 20`	`99`	Handles the maximum allowed bill count.
`50 5`	`50`	Confirms the second input value has no effect.

Edge Cases

When n = 0, the algorithm reads zero and prints zero immediately. There are no bills to pass, so the result is correct.

Input:
0 15

Execution:
n = 0
print(n)

Output:
0

When f changes while n stays the same, the output remains unchanged because the voting result depends only on the number of bills.

Input:
7 0

Execution:
n = 7
f = 0
print(n)

Output:
7

The algorithm handles this because it never uses f in the calculation. The only value that determines the answer is the number of bills entering the voting session.

CF 102680A - Passing Bills