# Posts published in “Algorithms”

There are n pieces arranged in a line, and each piece is colored either by 'A' or by 'B'. You are given a string colors of length n where colors[i] is the color of the ith piece.

Alice and Bob are playing a game where they take alternating turns removing pieces from the line. In this game, Alice moves first.

• Alice is only allowed to remove a piece colored 'A' if both its neighbors are also colored 'A'. She is not allowed to remove pieces that are colored 'B'.
• Bob is only allowed to remove a piece colored 'B' if both its neighbors are also colored 'B'. He is not allowed to remove pieces that are colored 'A'.
• Alice and Bob cannot remove pieces from the edge of the line.
• If a player cannot make a move on their turn, that player loses and the other player wins.

Assuming Alice and Bob play optimally, return true if Alice wins, or return false if Bob wins.

Example 1:

Input: colors = "AAABABB"
Output: true
Explanation:
AAABABB -> AABABB
Alice moves first.
She removes the second 'A' from the left since that is the only 'A' whose neighbors are both 'A'.

Now it's Bob's turn.
Bob cannot make a move on his turn since there are no 'B's whose neighbors are both 'B'.
Thus, Alice wins, so return true.


Example 2:

Input: colors = "AA"
Output: false
Explanation:
Alice has her turn first.
There are only two 'A's and both are on the edge of the line, so she cannot move on her turn.
Thus, Bob wins, so return false.


Example 3:

Input: colors = "ABBBBBBBAAA"
Output: false
Explanation:
ABBBBBBBAAA -> ABBBBBBBAA
Alice moves first.
Her only option is to remove the second to last 'A' from the right.

ABBBBBBBAA -> ABBBBBBAA
Next is Bob's turn.
He has many options for which 'B' piece to remove. He can pick any.

On Alice's second turn, she has no more pieces that she can remove.
Thus, Bob wins, so return false.


Constraints:

• 1 <= colors.length <= 105
• colors consists of only the letters 'A' and 'B'

## Solution: Counting

Count how many ‘AAA’s and ‘BBB’s.

Time complexity: O(n)
Space complexity: O(1)

## C++

You are given a string s consisting of n characters which are either 'X' or 'O'.

move is defined as selecting three consecutive characters of s and converting them to 'O'. Note that if a move is applied to the character 'O', it will stay the same.

Return the minimum number of moves required so that all the characters of s are converted to 'O'.

Example 1:

Input: s = "XXX"
Output: 1
Explanation: XXX -> OOO
We select all the 3 characters and convert them in one move.


Example 2:

Input: s = "XXOX"
Output: 2
Explanation: XXOX -> OOOX -> OOOO
We select the first 3 characters in the first move, and convert them to 'O'.
Then we select the last 3 characters and convert them so that the final string contains all 'O's.

Example 3:

Input: s = "OOOO"
Output: 0
Explanation: There are no 'X's in s to convert.


Constraints:

• 3 <= s.length <= 1000
• s[i] is either 'X' or 'O'.

## Solution: Straight Forward

if s[i] == ‘X’, change s[i], s[i + 1] and s[i + 2] to ‘O’.

Time complexity: O(n)
Space complexity: O(1)

## C++

The minimum absolute difference of an array a is defined as the minimum value of |a[i] - a[j]|, where 0 <= i < j < a.length and a[i] != a[j]. If all elements of a are the same, the minimum absolute difference is -1.

• For example, the minimum absolute difference of the array [5,2,3,7,2] is |2 - 3| = 1. Note that it is not 0 because a[i] and a[j] must be different.

You are given an integer array nums and the array queries where queries[i] = [li, ri]. For each query i, compute the minimum absolute difference of the subarray nums[li...ri] containing the elements of nums between the 0-based indices li and ri (inclusive).

Return an array ans where ans[i] is the answer to the ith query.

subarray is a contiguous sequence of elements in an array.

The value of |x| is defined as:

• x if x >= 0.
• -x if x < 0.

Example 1:

Input: nums = [1,3,4,8], queries = [[0,1],[1,2],[2,3],[0,3]]
Output: [2,1,4,1]
Explanation: The queries are processed as follows:
- queries[0] = [0,1]: The subarray is [1,3] and the minimum absolute difference is |1-3| = 2.
- queries[1] = [1,2]: The subarray is [3,4] and the minimum absolute difference is |3-4| = 1.
- queries[2] = [2,3]: The subarray is [4,8] and the minimum absolute difference is |4-8| = 4.
- queries[3] = [0,3]: The subarray is [1,3,4,8] and the minimum absolute difference is |3-4| = 1.


Example 2:

Input: nums = [4,5,2,2,7,10], queries = [[2,3],[0,2],[0,5],[3,5]]
Output: [-1,1,1,3]
Explanation: The queries are processed as follows:
- queries[0] = [2,3]: The subarray is [2,2] and the minimum absolute difference is -1 because all the
elements are the same.
- queries[1] = [0,2]: The subarray is [4,5,2] and the minimum absolute difference is |4-5| = 1.
- queries[2] = [0,5]: The subarray is [4,5,2,2,7,10] and the minimum absolute difference is |4-5| = 1.
- queries[3] = [3,5]: The subarray is [2,7,10] and the minimum absolute difference is |7-10| = 3.


Constraints:

• 2 <= nums.length <= 105
• 1 <= nums[i] <= 100
• 1 <= queries.length <= 2 * 104
• 0 <= li < ri < nums.length

## Solution: Binary Search

Since the value range of num is quiet small [1~100], we can store the indices for each value.
[2, 1, 2, 2, 3] => {1: [1], 2: [0, 2, 3]: 3: [4]}.

For each query, we try all possible value b. Check whether b is the query range using binary search, we also keep tracking the previous available value a, ans will be min{b – a}.

Time complexity: O(n + q * 100 * log(n))
Space complexity: O(n)

## C++

You are given two strings s and p where p is a subsequence of s. You are also given a distinct 0-indexed integer array removable containing a subset of indices of s (s is also 0-indexed).

You want to choose an integer k (0 <= k <= removable.length) such that, after removing k characters from s using the first k indices in removablep is still a subsequence of s. More formally, you will mark the character at s[removable[i]] for each 0 <= i < k, then remove all marked characters and check if p is still a subsequence.

Return the maximum k you can choose such that p is still a subsequence of s after the removals.

subsequence of a string is a new string generated from the original string with some characters (can be none) deleted without changing the relative order of the remaining characters.

Example 1:

Input: s = "abcacb", p = "ab", removable = [3,1,0]
Output: 2
Explanation: After removing the characters at indices 3 and 1, "abcacb" becomes "accb".
"ab" is a subsequence of "accb".
If we remove the characters at indices 3, 1, and 0, "abcacb" becomes "ccb", and "ab" is no longer a subsequence.
Hence, the maximum k is 2.


Example 2:

Input: s = "abcbddddd", p = "abcd", removable = [3,2,1,4,5,6]
Output: 1
Explanation: After removing the character at index 3, "abcbddddd" becomes "abcddddd".
"abcd" is a subsequence of "abcddddd".


Example 3:

Input: s = "abcab", p = "abc", removable = [0,1,2,3,4]
Output: 0
Explanation: If you remove the first index in the array removable, "abc" is no longer a subsequence.


Constraints:

• 1 <= p.length <= s.length <= 105
• 0 <= removable.length < s.length
• 0 <= removable[i] < s.length
• p is a subsequence of s.
• s and p both consist of lowercase English letters.
• The elements in removable are distinct.

## Solution: Binary Search + Two Pointers

If we don’t remove any thing, p is a subseq of s, as we keep removing, at some point L, p is no longer a subseq of s. e.g [0:True, 1: True, …, L – 1: True, L: False, L+1: False, …, m:False], this array is monotonic. We can use binary search to find the smallest L such that p is no long a subseq of s. Ans = L – 1.

For each guess, we can use two pointers to check whether p is subseq of removed(s) in O(n).

Time complexity: O(nlogn)
Space complexity: O(n)

## C++

You have n packages that you are trying to place in boxes, one package in each box. There are m suppliers that each produce boxes of different sizes (with infinite supply). A package can be placed in a box if the size of the package is less than or equal to the size of the box.

The package sizes are given as an integer array packages, where packages[i] is the size of the ith package. The suppliers are given as a 2D integer array boxes, where boxes[j] is an array of box sizes that the jth supplier produces.

You want to choose a single supplier and use boxes from them such that the total wasted space is minimized. For each package in a box, we define the space wasted to be size of the box - size of the package. The total wasted space is the sum of the space wasted in all the boxes.

• For example, if you have to fit packages with sizes [2,3,5] and the supplier offers boxes of sizes [4,8], you can fit the packages of size-2 and size-3 into two boxes of size-4 and the package with size-5 into a box of size-8. This would result in a waste of (4-2) + (4-3) + (8-5) = 6.

Return the minimum total wasted space by choosing the box supplier optimally, or -1 if it is impossible to fit all the packages inside boxes. Since the answer may be large, return it modulo 109 + 7.

Example 1:

Input: packages = [2,3,5], boxes = [[4,8],[2,8]]
Output: 6
Explanation: It is optimal to choose the first supplier, using two size-4 boxes and one size-8 box.
The total waste is (4-2) + (4-3) + (8-5) = 6.


Example 2:

Input: packages = [2,3,5], boxes = [[1,4],[2,3],[3,4]]
Output: -1
Explanation: There is no box that the package of size 5 can fit in.


Example 3:

Input: packages = [3,5,8,10,11,12], boxes = [[12],[11,9],[10,5,14]]
Output: 9
Explanation: It is optimal to choose the third supplier, using two size-5 boxes, two size-10 boxes, and two size-14 boxes.
The total waste is (5-3) + (5-5) + (10-8) + (10-10) + (14-11) + (14-12) = 9.


Constraints:

• n == packages.length
• m == boxes.length
• 1 <= n <= 105
• 1 <= m <= 105
• 1 <= packages[i] <= 105
• 1 <= boxes[j].length <= 105
• 1 <= boxes[j][k] <= 105
• sum(boxes[j].length) <= 105
• The elements in boxes[j] are distinct.

## Solution: Greedy + Binary Search

1. sort packages and boxes
2. for each box find all (unpacked) packages that are smaller or equal to itself.

Time complexity: O(nlogn) + O(mlogm) + O(mlogn)
Space complexity: O(1)