Programming Test

This problem requires writing a function to check if a given string is a pa palindrome. A palindrome is a string that reads the same way when its characters are reversed. To determine if a string is a palindrome, we can compare it with its reverse. We need to consider only the characters and ignore non-alphanumeric characters (like spaces, punctuation, etc.) unless specified otherwise. However, typically, a palindrome check considers only alphanumeric characters. Let's plan the steps: 1. Remove non-alphanumeric characters from the string. 2. Compare the resulting string with its reverse. If they are the same, then the original string is a palindrome. Now, let's write the function. We'll assume that we should consider only a alphanumeric characters (letters and numbers) to check for palindrome. If t the problem doesn't specify, we can do or ignore non-alphanumeric. However, looking at typical palindrome checks, it's common to ignore non-alphanumeric and case-sensitive differences? Actually, usually palindromes are checked ignoring case and non-alphanumeric. But let's see: if we consider only letters, "A man, a plan, a canal, s divides a lot", is not a palindrome because of spaces and punctuation. To be safe, we can write a function that processes the string to remove no non-alphanumeric characters and then check if it's a palindrome. So, the function would: - strip away non-alphanumeric (using `isalnum()` or similar) - convert to lowercase (to make comparison case-insensitive) - then check if the processed string is equal to its reverse. Let's write the code. Also, note that the problem says "one test case", but we don't have specific input. So we'll just define a general function. Now, let's write the function. </think> Here's a Python function that checks if a given string is a palindrome, considering only alphanumeric characters and ignoring case: ```python def is_palindrome(s): # Remove non-alphanumeric characters and convert to lowercase cleaned = ''.join(char for char in s if char.isalnum()).lower() # Check if the cleaned string is equal to its reverse return cleaned == cleaned[::-1] ``` You can test it with a sample case, such as: ```python print(is_palindrome("racecar")) # Should return True print(is_palindrome("hello")) # Should return False ```