76. Minimum Window Substring

Given two strings s and t of lengths m and n respectively, return the minimum window substring of s such that every character in t (including duplicates) is included in the window. If there is no such substring, return the empty string "".

The testcases will be generated such that the answer is unique.

A substring is a contiguous sequence of characters within the string.

Example 1:

Input: s = "ADOBECODEBANC", t = "ABC"
Output: "BANC"
Explanation: The minimum window substring "BANC" includes 'A', 'B', and 'C' from string t.

Example 2:

Input: s = "a", t = "a"
Output: "a"
Explanation: The entire string s is the minimum window.

Example 3:

Input: s = "a", t = "aa"
Output: ""
Explanation: Both 'a's from t must be included in the window.
Since the largest window of s only has one 'a', return empty string.

Constraints:

• m == s.length
• n == t.length
• 1 <= m, n <= 105
• s and t consist of uppercase and lowercase English letters.

Follow up: Could you find an algorithm that runs in O(m + n) time?

题目要求在已知字符串s中找出能包含t中所有字符的最小子字符串。简单方法就是以s每个字符为起点，每次遍历字符t的长度。但这种时间复杂度为O(mn)，题目要求时间复杂度为O(m+n). ‘

因此采用滑窗法，两根指针，一根代表子字符串开始，一根代表子字符串的结尾（结尾每次走一个字符，因此可以用循环来代替），用一个hashmap记录字符串t中每个字符出现的次数，遍历字符串t循环n次，此时遇到字符c后mp[c]++。遍历字符串s时，遇到t中存在的字符，将hashmap中的次数减少1。

class Solution {
public:
    string minWindow(string s, string t) {
        unordered_map<char, int> mp;
        
        //遍历字符串t，记录字符出现次数
        for(auto c : t) mp[c]++;
        
        //start记录当前子字符串开始位置
        //len记录当前最短符合要求的子字符串，初始值为最大值
        //pos记录当前最短符合要求的子字符串开始位置，初始值为-1，即无符合要求子字符串
        //count记录当前子字符串中包含t字符串所有字符的个数，每次mp[c]为0时更新一次
        int start = 0, len = INT_MAX, pos = -1, count = 0;
        for(int i=0; i<s.length(); i++){
            if(!mp.count(s[i])) continue;
            mp[s[i]]--;
            if(mp[s[i]] == 0){
                count++;
                if(count < mp.size()) continue; //t中还有字符未全包含在当前子字符串中continue
                
                //当前子字符串包含t中所有字符，收缩开始位置使得字符串最短
                while(start <= i){
                    while(start<=i && !mp.count(s[start])) start++;
                    if(mp[s[start]] < 0){
                        mp[s[start]]++;
                        start++;
                    } else break;
                }
                
                //计算当前子字符串长度，更新结果
                if(i-start+1 < len){
                    len = i-start+1;
                    pos = start;
                }
                
                //找下一个子字符串的开始位置
                mp[s[start]]++;
                start++;
                count--;
                while(start <= i){
                    while(start<=i && !mp.count(s[start])) start++;
                    if(mp[s[start]] < 0){
                        mp[s[start]]++;
                        start++;
                    } else break;
                }
            }
        }
        if(pos == -1) return "";
        return s.substr(pos, len);
    }
};