926. Flip String to Monotone Increasing

A string of '0’s and '1’s is monotone increasing if it consists of some number of '0’s (possibly 0),

followed by some number of '1’s (also possibly 0.)

We are given a string S of '0’s and '1’s, and we may flip any ‘0’ to a ‘1’ or a ‘1’ to a ‘0’.

Return the minimum number of flips to make S monotone increasing.

Example 1:

Input: “00110”
Output: 1
Explanation: We flip the last digit to get 00111.
Example 2:

Input: “010110”
Output: 2
Explanation: We flip to get 011111, or alternatively 000111.
Example 3:

Input: “00011000”
Output: 2
Explanation: We flip to get 00000000.

Note:

1 <= S.length <= 20000
S only consists of ‘0’ and ‘1’ characters.

思路

分解问题，统计每个0段前1的个数，比较0和1段的长度达小，取小的段长作为反转值，作为这个子段的贡献，然后顺序累加。

代码

class Solution {
    //    Algorithm:

    // Skip 0's until we encounter the first 1.
    // Keep track of number of 1's in onesCount (Prefix).
    // Any 0 that comes after we encounter 1 can be a potential candidate for flip. Keep track of it in flipCount.
    // If flipCount exceeds oneCount - (Prefix 1's flipped to 0's)
    // a. Then we are trying to flip more 0's (suffix) than number of 1's (prefix) we have.
    // b. Its better to flip the 1's instead.
    public int minFlipsMonoIncr(String S) {
        if(S == null || S.length() <= 0 )
            return 0;

        char[] sChars = S.toCharArray();
        int flipCount = 0;
        int onesCount = 0;

        for(int i=0; i<sChars.length; i++){
            if(sChars[i] == '0'){
                if(onesCount == 0) continue;
                else flipCount++;
            }else{
                onesCount++;
            }
            if(flipCount > onesCount){
                flipCount = onesCount;
            }
        }
        return flipCount;
    }
}