Zero sum covers

Introduction

Consider a nonempty list L of integers. A zero-sum slice of L is a contiguous subsequence of L whose sum equals 0. For example, [1, -3, 2] is a zero-sum slice of [-2, 4, 1, -3, 2, 2, -1, -1], but [2, 2] is not (because it doesn't sum to 0), and neither is [4, -3, -1] (because it's not contiguous).

A collection of zero-sum slices of L is a zero-sum cover of L if every element belongs to at least one of the slices. For example:

L = [-2, 4, 1, -3, 2, 2, -1, -1]
A = [-2, 4, 1, -3]
B =        [1, -3, 2]
C =                  [2, -1, -1]


The three zero-sum slices A, B and C form a zero-sum cover of L. Multiple copies of the same slice can appear in a zero-sum cover, like this:

L = [2, -1, -1, -1, 2, -1, -1]
A = [2, -1, -1]
B =        [-1, -1, 2]
C =                [2, -1, -1]


Of course, not all lists have a zero-sum cover; some examples are [2, -1] (every slice has nonzero sum) and [2, 2, -1, -1, 0, 1] (the leftmost 2 is not part of a zero-sum slice).

Your input is a nonempty integer list L, taken in any reasonable format. Your output shall be a truthy value if L has a zero-sum cover, and a falsy value if not.

You can write a full program or a function, and the lowest byte count wins.

Test cases

[-1] -> False
[2,-1] -> False
[2,2,-1,-1,0,1] -> False
[2,-2,1,2,-2,-2,4] -> False
[3,-5,-2,0,-3,-2,-1,-2,0,-2] -> False
[-2,6,3,-3,-3,-3,1,2,2,-2,-5,1] -> False
[5,-8,2,-1,-7,-4,4,1,-8,2,-1,-3,-3,-3,5,1] -> False
[-8,-8,4,1,3,10,9,-11,4,4,10,-2,-3,4,-10,-3,-5,0,6,9,7,-5,-3,-3] -> False
[10,8,6,-4,-2,-10,1,1,-5,-11,-3,4,11,6,-3,-4,-3,-9,-11,-12,-4,7,-10,-4] -> False
[0] -> True
[4,-2,-2] -> True
[2,2,-3,1,-2,3,1] -> True
[5,-3,-1,-2,1,5,-4] -> True
[2,-1,-1,-1,2,-1,-1] -> True
[-2,4,1,-3,2,2,-1,-1] -> True
[-4,-1,-1,6,3,6,-5,1,-5,-4,5,3] -> True
[-11,8,-2,-6,2,-12,5,3,-7,4,-7,7,12,-1,-1,6,-7,-4,-5,-12,9,5,6,-3] -> True
[4,-9,12,12,-11,-11,9,-4,8,5,-10,-6,2,-9,10,-11,-9,-2,8,4,-11,7,12,-5] -> True

• By "every element belongs to one of the slices", are you treating the same value at different indices as distinct? – ngenisis Jan 10 '17 at 15:46
• @ngenisis Yes, they are distinct and each should occur in a slice that contains the corresponding index. – Zgarb Jan 10 '17 at 16:38
• Should not the third falsy example [2,2,-1,-1,0,1] -> False be truthy since both slices [2,-1,-1] and [-1,0,1] add to zero and all their elements are in the original list? – dfernan Jan 10 '17 at 21:33
• The leftmost 2 is not part of any zero-sum slice. It's a bit unclear, but they have to occur in a slice that "contains their index". – Zgarb Jan 10 '17 at 21:35
• Understood. That makes it harder. :o) – dfernan Jan 10 '17 at 21:37

Jelly, 13 12 bytes

JẆịS¥ÐḟċþJḄẠ


Try it online!

How it works

JẆịS¥ÐḟċþJḄẠ  Main link. Argument: A (array)

J             Yield all indices of A.
Ẇ            Window; yield all slices of indices.
Ðḟ       Filter; keep slices for which the link to the left returns 0.
¥           Combine the two atoms to the left into a dyadic chain.
ị               Retrieve the elements of A at the slice's indices.
S              Take the sum.
J    Yield the indices of A.
ċþ     Count table; count how many times each index appears in each table.
Ḅ   Unbinary; convery the array of counts of each index from base 2 to
integer. This yields 0 iff an index does not appear in any slice.
Ạ  All; return 1 iff all integers are non-zero.


Mathematica, 66 65 bytes

Saved 1 byte, and hopefully learned a new trick for the future, thanks to ngenisis!

Two equally long alternatives, both of which are unnamed functions taking a list of integers as input and returning True or False:

And@@Table[0==Product[Tr@#[[i;;j]],{i,k},{j,k,l}],{k,l=Tr[1^#]}]&

0==Norm@Table[Product[Tr@#[[i;;j]],{i,k},{j,k,l}],{k,l=Tr[1^#]}]&


In both cases, Tr@#[[i;;j]] computes the sum of the slice of the input from position i to position j (1-indexed). Product[...,{i,k},{j,k,l}] multiples together all these slice-sums, as i ranges over indices that are at most k and j ranges over indices that are at least k. (Note that l=Tr[1^#] defines l to be the sum of 1 to all the powers in the input list, which is simply the length of the list.) In other words, this product equals 0 if and only if the kth element belongs to a zero-sum slice.

In the first version, each of those products is compared to 0, and And@@ returns True precisely when every single product equals 0. In the second version, the list of products is acted upon by the function Norm (the length of the l-dimensional vector), which equals 0 if and only if every entry equals 0.

• Tr[1^#] saves 1 byte from Length@#. – ngenisis Jan 10 '17 at 16:10
• Would 0^ work instead of 0==? Not sure how Mathematica handles that. (you would return 1/0 instead of true/false) – Cyoce Jan 10 '17 at 18:52
• Cool idea, but Mathematica returns Indeterminate for 0^0. Also, 1/0 aren't actually truthy/falsy in Mathematica—it's too strongly typed to make golfers happy :) – Greg Martin Jan 10 '17 at 22:03

Mathematica, 65 64 bytes

Thanks to ngenisis for saving 1 byte.

Union@@Cases[Subsequences[x=Range@Tr[1^#]],a_/;Tr@#[[a]]==0]==x&


I'd rather find a pure pattern matching solution, but it's proving to be tricky (and things like {___,a__,___} are always super lengthy).

import Data.Lists
g x=(1<$x)==(1<$nub(id=<<[i|(i,0)<-fmap sum.unzip<$>powerslice(zip[1..]x)]))  Usage example: g [-11,8,-2,-6,2,-12,5,3,-7,4,-7,7,12,-1,-1,6,-7,-4,-5,-12,9,5,6,-3] -> True. How it works (let's use [-1,1,5,-5] for input):  zip[1..]x -- zip each element with its index -- -> [(1,-1),(2,1),(3,5),(4,-5)] powerslice -- make a list of all continuous subsequences -- -> [[],[(1,-1)],[(1,-1),(2,1)],[(1,-1),(2,1),(3,5)],[(1,-1),(2,1),(3,5),(4,-5)],[(2,1)],[(2,1),(3,5)],[(2,1),(3,5),(4,-5)],[(3,5)],[(3,5),(4,-5)],[(4,-5)]] <$>            -- for each subsequence
unzip           --   turn the list of pairs into a pair of lists
--   -> [([],[]),([1],[-1]),([1,2],[-1,1]),([1,2,3],[-1,1,5]),([1,2,3,4],[-1,1,5,-5]),([2],[1]),([2,3],[1,5]),([2,3,4],[1,5,-5]),([3],[5]),([3,4],[5,-5]),([4],[-5])]
fmap sum         --   and sum the second element
--   -> [([],0),([1],-1),([1,2],0),([1,2,3],5),([1,2,3,4],0),([2],1),([2,3],6),([2,3,4],1),([3],5),([3,4],0),([4],-5)]
[i|(i,0)<-    ]   -- take all list of indices where the corresponding sum == 0
-- -> [[],[1,2],[1,2,3,4],[3,4]]
id=<<             -- flatten the list
-- -> [1,2,1,2,3,4,3,4]
nub                -- remove duplicates
-- -> [1,2,3,4]

(1<$x)==(1<$    )  -- check if the above list has the same length as the input list.

• powerslice is such a great function name. – Zgarb Jan 11 '17 at 7:21

Ruby, 81 bytes

Try it online

Simplistic brute-force solution; for every element of the array, try to find a zero-sum slice that contains it.

->a{(0..l=a.size).all?{|i|(0..i).any?{|j|(i..l).any?{|k|a[j..k].inject(:+)==0}}}}


J, 36 35 bytes

#\*/@e.[:;]({:*0=[:+/{.)@|:\.\@,.#\


For every subsum I add the element's indexes and I keep the indexes iff subsum is 0 and then check whether every index is present.

Trick: 1-based indexes of a list can be generated with #\ i.e. length of every prefix.

Usage:

   (#\*/@e.[:;]({:*0=[:+/{.)@|:\.\@,.#\) 2 _1 _1 2
1
(#\*/@e.[:;]({:*0=[:+/{.)@|:\.\@,.#\) 2 _1
0


Try it online here.

• I think you can save 2 bytes using the base 1 trick for summation and using a composed flatten #\*/@e.&,]({:*0=1#.{.)@|:\.\@,.#\ – miles Jan 13 '17 at 4:02

JavaScript (ES6), 109 bytes

f=([q,...a],b=[],c=[])=>1/q?f(a,[...b,0].map((x,i)=>x+q||(c=c.map((n,j)=>n|i<=j)),c.push(0)),c):c.every(x=>x)


Test snippet

f=([q,...a],b=[],c=[])=>1/q?f(a,[...b,0].map((x,i)=>x+q||(c=c.map((n,j)=>n|i<=j)),c.push(0)),c):c.every(x=>x)

I.textContent = I.textContent.replace(/.+/g,x=>x+ (${f(eval(x.split(" ")[0]))})) <pre id=I>[-1] -> False [2,-1] -> False [2,2,-1,-1,0,1] -> False [2,-2,1,2,-2,-2,4] -> False [3,-5,-2,0,-3,-2,-1,-2,0,-2] -> False [-2,6,3,-3,-3,-3,1,2,2,-2,-5,1] -> False [5,-8,2,-1,-7,-4,4,1,-8,2,-1,-3,-3,-3,5,1] -> False [-8,-8,4,1,3,10,9,-11,4,4,10,-2,-3,4,-10,-3,-5,0,6,9,7,-5,-3,-3] -> False [10,8,6,-4,-2,-10,1,1,-5,-11,-3,4,11,6,-3,-4,-3,-9,-11,-12,-4,7,-10,-4] -> False [0] -> True [4,-2,-2] -> True [2,2,-3,1,-2,3,1] -> True [5,-3,-1,-2,1,5,-4] -> True [2,-1,-1,-1,2,-1,-1] -> True [-2,4,1,-3,2,2,-1,-1] -> True [-4,-1,-1,6,3,6,-5,1,-5,-4,5,3] -> True [-11,8,-2,-6,2,-12,5,3,-7,4,-7,7,12,-1,-1,6,-7,-4,-5,-12,9,5,6,-3] -> True [4,-9,12,12,-11,-11,9,-4,8,5,-10,-6,2,-9,10,-11,-9,-2,8,4,-11,7,12,-5] -> True</pre> Python, 123 120 bytes -3 bytes thanks to @Zgarb Populates a list with the same size as the input with zero-sum slices and overwrites according to indexes, returning its equality to the original at the end. def f(l): s=len(l);n=[0]*s for i in range(s): for j in range(i,s+1): if sum(l[i:j])==0:n[i:j]=l[i:j] return n==l  • I think you can use 0 as the placeholder instead of None. There won't be false positives, because every 0 in the input is always part or a zero-sum slice. – Zgarb Jan 11 '17 at 7:23 • You are right. I thought about that but ended up concluding that it could incur in false positives. – dfernan Jan 11 '17 at 9:05 Scala, 49 bytes % =>(1 to%.size)flatMap(%sliding)exists(_.sum==0)  Try it at ideone Usage: val f:(Seq[Int]=>Boolean)= % =>(1 to%.size)flatMap(%sliding)exists(_.sum==0) f(Seq(4, -2, -2)) //returns true  Ungolfed: array=>(1 to array.size) .flatMap(n => array.sliding(n)) .exists(slice => slice.sum == 0)  Explanation: % => //define a anonymouns function with a parameter called % (1 to %.size) //create a range from 1 to the size of % flatMap( //flatMap each number n of the range %sliding //to an iterator with all slices of % with length n )exists( //check whether there's an iterator with a sum of 0 _.sum==0 )  • I'm not exactly sure how this works, but I think it should fail on some of the truthy test cases. – Zgarb Jan 10 '17 at 17:08 • @Zgarb I added a link to ideone, so you can verify that it's correct. It's basically a brute-force, trying every possible slice. – corvus_192 Jan 10 '17 at 17:33 • You can use % as a parameter name? Cool! – Cyoce Jan 10 '17 at 18:54 • @Cyoce You can use pretty much any Unicode char except .,;:()[]{}\"'. Pretty useful for golfing, because they get seperated from letters by the parse, so you can save some whitespace. – corvus_192 Jan 10 '17 at 19:52 • I checked the test cases, and it seems to give true for the second falsy case. – Zgarb Jan 10 '17 at 20:03 Python, 86 Bytes def f(l): r=range(len(l)) if[i for i in r for j in r if sum(l[j:j+i+1])==0]:return 1  Truthy = 1 Falsy = None • This incorrectly returns 1 for the third test case. – Zgarb Jan 11 '17 at 8:44 • It actually returns 1 for all test cases except the first two falsy ones. – dfernan Jan 11 '17 at 9:17 Clojure, 109 bytes #(=(count %)(count(set(flatten(for[r[(range(count %))]l r p(partition l 1 r):when(=(apply +(map % p))0)]p))))  Generates all partitions which sum to zero, checks that it has "length of input vector" distinct indices. PHP, 104 bytes Brute force and still over 99 bytes. :-( for($p=$r=$c=$argc;$s=--$p;)for($i=$c;$s&&$k=--$i;)for($s=0;$k<$c&&($r-=!$s+=$argv[$k++])&&$s;);echo!$r;  takes input from command line arguments, 1 for truthy, empty for falsy. Run with -r. breakdown for($p=$r=$argc;$s=$p--;)   # loop $p from$argc-1 to 0 with dummy value >0 for $s for($i=$p;$s&&$k=$i--;)     # loop $i (slice start) from$p to 1, break if sum is 0
for($s=0; # init sum to 0$k<$argc # loop$k (slice end) from $i to$argc-1
&&($r-=!$s+=$argv[$k++])    # update sum, decrement $r if sum is 0 &&$s;);                     # break loop if sum is 0
echo!$r; #$r = number of elements that are not part of a zero-sum slice


\$argv[0] contains the filename; if run with -r, it will be - and evaluate to 0 for numeric ops.

JavaScript (ES6), 102 bytes

a=>(g=f=>a.map((_,i)=>f(i)))(i=>g(j=>j<i||(t+=a[j])||g(k=>b[k]&=k<i|k>j),t=0),b=g(_=>1))&&!/1/.test(b)


Computes the partial sums for all the elements i..j inclusive, and resets the relevant elements of b from 1 to 0 when it finds a zero sum, finally checking that there are no 1s left.