#3223
Minimum Length of String After Operations
medium · 75% accepted · 728 likes · top 86%
hash table · string · counting
Description
You are given a string s.
You can perform the following process on s any number of times:
- Choose an index i in the string such that there is at least one character to the left of index i that is equal to s[i], and at least one character to the right that is also equal to s[i].
- Delete the closest occurrence of s[i] located to the left of i.
- Delete the closest occurrence of s[i] located to the right of i.
Return the minimum length of the final string s that you can achieve.
Solution