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Validate JavaScript Riddle Assertions
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Validate JavaScript Riddle Assertions

MediumPython

Problem

Problem Narrative

You’re building an internal hiring platform for a fintech company that screens JavaScript candidates at scale (hundreds of thousands of submissions per day). To reduce fraud and keep grading deterministic, the platform runs “vanilla JS riddles” inside a locked-down test framework. Each riddle is a tiny assertion like expect(reverse("abc")).toBe("cba").

Your job is to implement the core assertion evaluator that determines whether each riddle passes without executing JavaScript. Instead, you’ll parse and evaluate a limited, safe subset of expressions.

Formal Problem Statement

Implement evaluate_riddles(riddles: list[str]) -> list[bool].

Each riddle string has the form:

expect(<expr>).toBe(<expr>)

Where <expr> is one of:

  1. A string literal in double quotes, containing lowercase letters only: "abc"
  2. A non-negative integer literal: 0, 12, 300
  3. A function call with one argument: reverse(<expr>), len(<expr>), or isPalindrome(<expr>)

Supported functions:

  • reverse(s): returns the reversed string
  • len(s): returns the length of the string
  • isPalindrome(s): returns true if s equals its reverse, else false

Return a boolean per riddle indicating whether the left and right expressions evaluate to the same value (type-sensitive: string vs int vs bool).

Notes / Clarifications

  • Only the exact grammar above appears (no arithmetic, no concatenation, no variables).
  • true/false appear only as the output of isPalindrome(...) or as literals on the right/left.
  • Comparisons are strict: "2" is not equal to 2.

Constraints

  • 1 <= riddles.length <= 10^4
  • 1 <= riddles[i].length <= 200
  • Only lowercase a-z inside quotes
  • 0 <= integer <= 10^9 (fits in 32-bit signed)
  • Well-formed; no spaces; only reverse/len/isPalindrome and literals
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