Remove Substrings

Given a string s and a set of n substrings. You are supposed to remove every instance of those n substrings from s so that s is of the minimum length and output this minimum length. 

Have you met this question in a real interview? 

Yes

Example

Given s = ccdaabcdbb, substrs = ["ab", "cd"]
Return 2

Explanation: 
ccdaabcdbb -> ccdacdbb -> cabb -> cb (length = 2)

直接使用BFS可以解决，但是一开始的时候使用python的返回值写错了位置，debug了很久

java

public class Solution {
    /*
     * @param s: a string
     * @param dict: a set of n substrings
     * @return: the minimum length
     */
    public int minLength(String s1, Set<String> dict) {
        // write your code here
        if (s1 == null || dict == null) {
            return -1;
        }
        Queue<String> queue = new LinkedList<>();
        Set<String> set = new HashSet<>();
        queue.offer(s1);
        set.add(s1);
        int min = Integer.MAX_VALUE;
        while (!queue.isEmpty()) {
            String str = queue.poll();
            min = Math.min(min, str.length());
            for (String s : dict) {
                int index = str.indexOf(s);
                while (index != -1) {
                    String new_str = str.substring(0, index) + str.substring(index + s.length(), str.length());
                    if (!set.contains(new_str)) {
                        queue.offer(new_str);
                        set.add(new_str);
                    }
                    index = str.indexOf(s, index + 1);
                }    
            }
        }
        return min;
    }
}

python

import Queue
class Solution:
    """
    @param: s: a string
    @param: dict: a set of n substrings
    @return: the minimum length
    """
    def minLength(self, s, dict):
        # write your code here
        if s is None or dict is None:
            return -1
        queue, table = Queue.Queue(), set()
        queue.put(s)
        table.add(s)
        count = float('inf')
        while not queue.empty():
            string = queue.get()
            count = min(count, len(string))
            for ele in dict:
                index = string.find(ele)
                while index != -1:
                    new_str = string[: index] + string[index + len(ele): ]
                    if new_str not in table:
                        queue.put(new_str)
                        table.add(new_str)
                    index = string.find(ele, index + 1)
        return count