1370. Increasing Decreasing String
Easy77.2% acceptance97,794 / 126,640 submissions
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Topics
You are given a string s. Reorder the string using the following algorithm:
- Remove the smallest character from
sand append it to the result. - Remove the smallest character from
sthat is greater than the last appended character, and append it to the result. - Repeat step 2 until no more characters can be removed.
- Remove the largest character from
sand append it to the result. - Remove the largest character from
sthat is smaller than the last appended character, and append it to the result. - Repeat step 5 until no more characters can be removed.
- Repeat steps 1 through 6 until all characters from
shave been removed.
If the smallest or largest character appears more than once, you may choose any occurrence to append to the result.
Return the resulting string after reordering s using this algorithm.
Example 1:
Input: s = "aaaabbbbcccc" Output: "abccbaabccba" Explanation: After steps 1, 2 and 3 of the first iteration, result = "abc" After steps 4, 5 and 6 of the first iteration, result = "abccba" First iteration is done. Now s = "aabbcc" and we go back to step 1 After steps 1, 2 and 3 of the second iteration, result = "abccbaabc" After steps 4, 5 and 6 of the second iteration, result = "abccbaabccba"
Example 2:
Input: s = "rat" Output: "art" Explanation: The word "rat" becomes "art" after re-ordering it with the mentioned algorithm.
Constraints:
1 <= s.length <= 500sconsists of only lowercase English letters.
Hints
Hint 1
Count the frequency of each character.
Hint 2
Loop over all character from 'a' to 'z' and append the character if it exists and decrease frequency by 1. Do the same from 'z' to 'a'.
Hint 3
Keep repeating until the frequency of all characters is zero.