[LeetCode] (medium) 402. Remove K Digits

https://leetcode.com/problems/remove-k-digits/

Given a non-negative integer num represented as a string, remove k digits from the number so that the new number is the smallest possible.

Note:

• The length of num is less than 10002 and will be ≥ k.
• The given num does not contain any leading zero.

Example 1:

Input: num = "1432219", k = 3
Output: "1219"
Explanation: Remove the three digits 4, 3, and 2 to form the new number 1219 which is the smallest.

Example 2:

Input: num = "10200", k = 1
Output: "200"
Explanation: Remove the leading 1 and the number is 200. Note that the output must not contain leading zeroes.

Example 3:

Input: num = "10", k = 2
Output: "0"
Explanation: Remove all the digits from the number and it is left with nothing which is 0.

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一开始想的方法是，先处理前驱零的情况（因为一旦能够出现前驱零，就意味着结果的位数会更少，必然是最优解），然后再处理后半部分的平凡情况，处理的方法是dfs，然后果不其然TLE了

 

看了正规做法，其实是利用单调栈的思想，证明也很容易，利用反证法，如果不按照单调栈的想法将这些值pop出去，那么最后的结果中对应位必然比单调栈操作后的对应位要大，所以必然不是最优解（这种思想下在比较时不用对零特殊处理，只需要在push进去的时候处理一下防止前驱零就可以了）。利用的是字符串比较时仅针对前驱大小的局部性

class Solution {
public:
    string removeKdigits(string num, int k) {
        string result = "";
        
        for(char cha : num){
            while(!result.empty() && k != 0 && cha < result.back()){
                result.pop_back();
                --k;
            }
            
            if(!result.empty() || cha != '0') result.push_back(cha);
        }
        
        while(!result.empty() && k != 0){
            result.pop_back();
            --k;
        }
        
        if(result == "") return "0";
        else return result;
    }
};