Protocol definition

Parse a simple wire protocol and return a structured dictionary.

parsing protocol strings dict

You are implementing a decoder for a simple text-based protocol. Each message consists of one or more fields separated by ';'. Each field is a key-value pair where key and value are separated by '='. Keys are alphanumeric (letters and digits) and values may contain any characters except ';' and '='. For example: 'name=Alice;role=admin;id=42'.

Write a function `parse_protocol(s: str) -> dict` that takes a string `s` and returns a dictionary with the parsed fields.

Rules:
- If `s` is an empty string, return an empty dictionary `{}`.
- If `s` ends with a semicolon, ignore that trailing semicolon.
- Keys must be unique; if a duplicate key appears, the last value wins.
- If a field is malformed (does not contain exactly one '=' or the key is empty), skip that field entirely.

Implement the function exactly as specified.

Constraints

- `s` is a string of length between 0 and 1000.
- Keys consist of alphanumeric characters (a-z, A-Z, 0-9) and are case-sensitive.
- Values are non-empty and may contain any printable ASCII except ';' and '='.
- Number of fields is between 0 and 50.

Your solution should run in O(n) time, where n is the length of the string.

Example

>>> parse_protocol('name=Alice;role=admin;id=42')
{'name': 'Alice', 'role': 'admin', 'id': '42'}
>>> parse_protocol('')
{}
>>> parse_protocol('a=1;b=2;')
{'a': '1', 'b': '2'}
>>> parse_protocol('x=1;x=2')
{'x': '2'}

10 points ~15 min

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Hints

Split the string by ';' and handle the trailing semicolon case.

For each part, check that exactly one '=' exists and the key is not empty.

Use a dictionary and assign by key, so later duplicates overwrite earlier ones.

Test Results

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