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
NeetCode 150, NeetCode 250, NeetCode All. Last modified on September 7, 2026