The recruiter forgot to schedule the interview. The interviewer apologized and scheduled one. I was given a problem for which code needed to be written in a shared editor, Codepair. It had a compiler, so it was easy. I was given one hour to solve it.

Write code for the function matchstr() given these examples:

• "ab" in a(1)b(1) ---> true
• "z" in a(4)b(4) --> false
• "aaaa" in a(3)b(3) ---> false
• "aab" in a(3)b(3) ---> true
• "aaba" in a(3)b(3) ---> true

I was told that a(3)b(3) means strings like {"ab", "aab", "aaab", "aabbb"... etc.}. These are all combinations of 'a' and 'b' strings where 'b' should always be after an 'a'.

I was also told that a(3)b(3)a(3) is also possible.

Furthermore, I learned that a(0)b(3)a(3)c(3) is also possible, which means every string starts with 'b'. This information changed my interview experience.