#451
Sort Characters By Frequency
medium · verified · 75.1% accepted · 9,176 likes · top 86%
hash table · string · sorting · heap (priority queue) · bucket sort · counting
Description
Given a string s, sort it in decreasing order based on the frequency of the characters. The frequency of a character is the number of times it appears in the string.
Return the sorted string. If there are multiple answers, return any of them.
Example 1:
Input: s = "tree"
Output: "eert"
Explanation: 'e' appears twice while 'r' and 't' both appear once.
So 'e' must appear before both 'r' and 't'. Therefore "eetr" is also a valid answer.
Example 2:
Input: s = "cccaaa"
Output: "aaaccc"
Explanation: Both 'c' and 'a' appear three times, so both "cccaaa" and "aaaccc" are valid answers.
Note that "cacaca" is incorrect, as the same characters must be together.
Example 3:
Input: s = "Aabb"
Output: "bbAa"
Explanation: "bbaA" is also a valid answer, but "Aabb" is incorrect.
Note that 'A' and 'a' are treated as two different characters.
Solution