Hi I attempted this problem in today's contest and I am very confused about this problem and what I am doing wrong. Firstly, my code is in Java (only language i'm good enough at to attempt these tough problems), and I decided to use HashMaps to store each SINGLE letter as well as each DOUBLE letter (ex: "ab", "ba", "cp", etc.) and got their total values at the end to see which one was in the string the most. That way, I knew how many letters I could keep and just subtracted that from the total string length to find the minimum number of deletions. However, it keeps giving the wrong answer for Test Case 2, and I don't know how to make my code any better. https://codeforces.me/contest/1389/problem/C
import java.util.*;
public class Main {
public static void main(String[] args)
{
Scanner sc = new Scanner(System.in);
int t = sc.nextInt();
for (int i = 0; i < t; i++)
{
int max = 0;
HashMap<String, Integer> map = new HashMap<String, Integer>();
String cyc = sc.next();
for (int j = 0; j < cyc.length(); j++)
{
String single = cyc.substring(j, j+1);
if (j < cyc.length()-1 && !single.equals(cyc.substring(j+1,j+2)))
{
String doub = cyc.substring(j, j+2);
if (map.containsKey(doub))
{
map.replace(doub, map.get(doub)+1);
max = Math.max(max, map.get(doub) *2);
}
else
{
map.put(doub, 1);
max = Math.max(max, map.get(doub) *2);
}
}
if (map.containsKey(single))
{
map.replace(single, map.get(single)+1);
max = Math.max(max, map.get(single));
}
else
{
map.put(single, 1);
max = Math.max(max, map.get(single));
}
}
int fin = cyc.length() - max;
System.out.println(fin);
}
}
}
Check the following Java solution. It should give you a hint about how to compute the correct answer.
88418302
Note that by definition, there are two possible cases for composing a good string: