1347. Minimum Number of Steps to Make Two Strings Anagram

Problem Link

Description

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You are given two strings of the same length s and t. In one step you can choose any character of t and replace it with another character.

Return the minimum number of steps to make t an anagram of s.

An Anagram of a string is a string that contains the same characters with a different (or the same) ordering.

 

Example 1:

Input: s = "bab", t = "aba"
Output: 1
Explanation: Replace the first 'a' in t with b, t = "bba" which is anagram of s.

Example 2:

Input: s = "leetcode", t = "practice"
Output: 5
Explanation: Replace 'p', 'r', 'a', 'i' and 'c' from t with proper characters to make t anagram of s.

Example 3:

Input: s = "anagram", t = "mangaar"
Output: 0
Explanation: "anagram" and "mangaar" are anagrams. 

 

Constraints:

• 1 <= s.length <= 5 * 104
• s.length == t.length
• s and t consist of lowercase English letters only.

Solution

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Python3

class Solution:
    def minSteps(self, s: str, t: str) -> int:
        N = len(s)
        counter = Counter(s)
        res = 0
        
        for x in t:
            counter[x] -= 1
        
        for v in counter.values():
            if v > 0:
                res += v
        
        return res