Description
You are given a string s
and an integer repeatLimit
. Construct a new string repeatLimitedString
using the characters of s
such that no letter appears more than repeatLimit
times in a row. You do not have to use all characters from s
.
Return the lexicographically largest repeatLimitedString
possible.
A string a
is lexicographically larger than a string b
if in the first position where a
and b
differ, string a
has a letter that appears later in the alphabet than the corresponding letter in b
. If the first min(a.length, b.length)
characters do not differ, then the longer string is the lexicographically larger one.
Example 1:
Input: s = "cczazcc", repeatLimit = 3 Output: "zzcccac" Explanation: We use all of the characters from s to construct the repeatLimitedString "zzcccac". The letter 'a' appears at most 1 time in a row. The letter 'c' appears at most 3 times in a row. The letter 'z' appears at most 2 times in a row. Hence, no letter appears more than repeatLimit times in a row and the string is a valid repeatLimitedString. The string is the lexicographically largest repeatLimitedString possible so we return "zzcccac". Note that the string "zzcccca" is lexicographically larger but the letter 'c' appears more than 3 times in a row, so it is not a valid repeatLimitedString.
Example 2:
Input: s = "aababab", repeatLimit = 2 Output: "bbabaa" Explanation: We use only some of the characters from s to construct the repeatLimitedString "bbabaa". The letter 'a' appears at most 2 times in a row. The letter 'b' appears at most 2 times in a row. Hence, no letter appears more than repeatLimit times in a row and the string is a valid repeatLimitedString. The string is the lexicographically largest repeatLimitedString possible so we return "bbabaa". Note that the string "bbabaaa" is lexicographically larger but the letter 'a' appears more than 2 times in a row, so it is not a valid repeatLimitedString.
Constraints:
1 <= repeatLimit <= s.length <= 105
s
consists of lowercase English letters.
Solution
Python3
class Solution:
def repeatLimitedString(self, s: str, repeatLimit: int) -> str:
N = len(s)
counter = [0] * 26
res = ""
for x in s:
counter[ord(x) - ord('a')] += 1
i = 25
pending = -1
while i >= 0:
if counter[i] == 0:
i -= 1
continue
if pending == -1:
take = min(counter[i], repeatLimit)
res += chr(i + ord('a')) * take
counter[i] -= take
if counter[i] > 0:
pending = i + 1
else:
res += chr(i + ord('a'))
counter[i] -= 1
i = pending
pending = -1
i -= 1
return res