Robot Movement Simulation | Dataford Interview Questions

Goldman Sachs Marquee uses event-driven automation patterns that can be modeled as sequential commands. Given a command string describing a robot's movement on an infinite two-dimensional grid, calculate its final coordinate after executing every command.

The robot starts at (0, 0). Each character moves it by one unit:

U: increase y by 1
D: decrease y by 1
L: decrease x by 1
R: increase x by 1

Formal Specification

Implement final_position(commands). The input is a string containing only the uppercase characters U, D, L, and R. Return the final position as a two-element list [x, y]. Process commands from left to right without storing the full path.

Constraints

0 <= len(commands) <= 10^6
commands contains only U, D, L, and R
Coordinates fit within standard Python integers

Function Signature

def final_position(commands):

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