957. Prison Cells After N Days

There are 8 prison cells in a row, and each cell is either occupied or vacant.

Each day, whether the cell is occupied or vacant changes according to the following rules:

• If a cell has two adjacent neighbors that are both occupied or both vacant, then the cell becomes occupied.

• Otherwise, it becomes vacant.

(Note that because the prison is a row, the first and the last cells in the row can't have two adjacent neighbors.)

We describe the current state of the prison in the following way: cells[i] == 1 if the i-th cell is occupied, else cells[i] == 0.

Given the initial state of the prison, return the state of the prison after N days (and N such changes described above.)

Example 1:

Input: cells = [0,1,0,1,1,0,0,1], N = 7
Output: [0,0,1,1,0,0,0,0]
Explanation: 
The following table summarizes the state of the prison on each day:
Day 0: [0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1]
Day 1: [0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0, 0]
Day 2: [0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 0]
Day 3: [0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0]
Day 4: [0, 0, 0, 0, 0, 1, 0, 0]
Day 5: [0, 1, 1, 1, 0, 1, 0, 0]
Day 6: [0, 0, 1, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0]
Day 7: [0, 0, 1, 1, 0, 0, 0, 0]

Example 2:

Input: cells = [1,0,0,1,0,0,1,0], N = 1000000000
Output: [0,0,1,1,1,1,1,0]

Note:

1. cells.length == 8

2. cells[i] is in {0, 1}

3. 1 <= N <= 10^9

vector<int> prisonAfterNDays(vector<int>& cells, int N) { // time: O(2^n); space: O(n)
    int n = cells.size();
    vector<int> cur = cells, next(n), first_state;
    for (int cycle = 0; N-- > 0 ;++cycle, cur = next) {
        for (int k = 1; k < n - 1; ++k) next[k] = cur[k - 1] == cur[k + 1];
        if (cycle == 0) first_state = next;
        else if (next == first_state) N %= cycle;
    }
    return cur;
}