This problem has three kinds of situations:
1. [0,0,1,1,1,] -> 0s start from i=0, the plant count = zeroNumber/2.
2.[1,0,0,0,1] -> 0s are in between 1, the plant count = zeroNumber-1/2
3.[1,0,1,0,0,0,0] -> 0s end at i=flowerbed.length-1, the plant count = zeroNumber/2.
The solution is as following to deal with the above 3 situations:
public boolean canPlaceFlowers(int[] flowerbed, int n) { int zeroCount = 1; // situation 1 for (int i = 0; i < flowerbed.length; i++) { if (flowerbed[i] == 0) { zeroCount++; } else { n -= (zeroCount - 1) / 2; //situation 2 zeroCount = 0; } } n -= (zeroCount) / 2; //situation 3 return n <= 0; }