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LeetCode 494, Medium. Topics: Array, Dynamic Programming, Backtracking. View on LeetCode. Generate this problem as a practice environment: tested reference solution, 14 parametrized pytest cases, and a playground notebook:

Problem

You are given an integer array nums and an integer target. You want to build an expression out of nums by adding one of the symbols + and - before each integer in nums and then concatenate all the integers.
  • For example, if nums = [2, 1], you can add a + before 2 and a - before 1 and concatenate them to build the expression +2-1.
Return the number of different expressions that you can build, which evaluates to target.

Examples

Explanation: There are 5 ways to assign symbols to make the sum of nums be target 3. -1 + 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 +1 - 1 + 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 +1 + 1 - 1 + 1 + 1 = 3 +1 + 1 + 1 - 1 + 1 = 3 +1 + 1 + 1 + 1 - 1 = 3

Constraints

  • 1 <= nums.length <= 20
  • 0 <= nums[i] <= 1000
  • 0 <= sum(nums[i]) <= 1000
  • -1000 <= target <= 1000

Solution

Reference implementation from solution.py on GitHub, full suite in test_solution.py:

Complexity

Tags

NeetCode 150, NeetCode 250, NeetCode All.
Last modified on August 25, 2026