Final answer:
To find the number of steps needed to reach a specific target sweetness level by combining candies, you can use a dynamic programming approach. This can be implemented in Java using recursion. The program initializes a dynamic programming array and iterates through the candies and sweetness levels to update the array. Finally, it returns the number of steps needed to reach the target sweetness level.
Step-by-step explanation:
To solve this problem, we can use recursion to find the number of steps needed to reach the target sweetness level. Here is the Java program:
public class CandyCombination {
public static int stepsToReachTarget(int[] candies, int target) {
int[] dp = new int[target + 1];
dp[0] = 0;
for (int i = 1; i <= target; i++) {
dp[i] = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
for (int j = 0; j < candies.length; j++) {
if (candies[j] <= i && dp[i - candies[j]] != Integer.MAX_VALUE) {
dp[i] = Math.min(dp[i], dp[i - candies[j]] + 1);
}
}
}
return dp[target] == Integer.MAX_VALUE ? -1 : dp[target];
}
public static void main(String[] args) {
int[] candies = {2, 4, 6};
int target = 10;
int steps = stepsToReachTarget(candies, target);
System.out.println("Number of steps needed: " + steps);
}
}
In this program, the stepsToReachTarget method takes an array of candies and the target sweetness level as parameters. It initializes a dynamic programming array dp with a size of target + 1. The dp array stores the minimum number of steps needed to reach each sweetness level. It then uses nested loops to iterate through each candy and each sweetness level, updating the dp array if a candy can be combined to reach the current sweetness level. Finally, the method returns the number of steps needed to reach the target sweetness level. In the main method, you can test the program by providing an array of candies and the target sweetness level.