You are given an string s of length n. And there is a eraser and it deletes neighboring characters of a particular letter when it place on a specific position. For an example 'aaaaba' when we place eraser on 1st 'a'(index 0), string becomes 'ba' (since we deleted all the letters of the neighboring 'a's). Task is to delete the entire string in minimum operations.
Test 1
Input -> 6 aabcbb
Output -> 3
Constraints
1<=n<=1000
Assuming it can erase both neighbours at same time. So elimininate 3 in one go.
Edit: This is wrong. By neighbours, it means all consecutive neighbours that are same, not just adjacent.
but it didn't work
Can you share the problem link?
I sent the link as a message
Problem Link
Language of submission is ADA, no other language, I can't code it there.
I think problem is not so easy as it seems. My approach would be to use 2d DP. dp[i][j] represents minimum operation to erase string from i to j. Then for example in string "bbbabaabaa" I would try to erase all subtrings between consecutive 'b' recursively using minimum operations, and then at last delete all 'b' in one go. I would do this for all characters from 'a' to 'z'. Complexity would be O(26*N*N).
Problem doesn't allow C++, or I would've tested it.
But I coded in C++. I think u didn't choose the correct language
just do exactly what eraser do:
I think this will work
This works well. But it will not give the optimal answer. Need to do with minimum operations
please provide a counter test for this case
bbbabaabaa
Optimal answer is 4, but your answer is 6
Let's consider string
abaca
.The correct answer is 3 but your algo gives 5.
Ahh , I understood the problem in wrong way
aaaaba => aba
, as 1 eraser removes all equal elements.What are we doing here is we calculate the optimal answer for the ranges
(i + 1, j)
and(i, j - 1)
and then combine them adding 1 eraser if edge elements are different.This should work, I hope it helps.
Thanks a lot. I'll try and let u know.
This problem can be solved using range DP.
dp[i][j] = \min \begin{cases}
dp[i+1][j] + 1, \\ dp[i][j-1] + 1, \\ dp[i+1][j], & \text{if } a[i] = a[i+1]\\ dp[i][j-1], & \text{if } a[j] = a[j-1]\\ \min(dp[i+1][j], dp[i][j-1]), & \text{if } a[i] = a[j] \end{cases} $$$
The solution comes from the fact that you do not need to perform extra operations on characters that are same to the next one.
Thanks a lot. I'll try and let u know.