leetcode - 921. Minimum Add to Make Parentheses Valid

Description

A parentheses string is valid if and only if:

It is the empty string,
It can be written as AB (A concatenated with B), where A and B are valid strings, or
It can be written as (A), where A is a valid string.
You are given a parentheses string s. In one move, you can insert a parenthesis at any position of the string.

For example, if s = “()))”, you can insert an opening parenthesis to be “(()))” or a closing parenthesis to be “())))”.
Return the minimum number of moves required to make s valid.

Example 1:

Input: s = "())"
Output: 1

Example 2:

Input: s = "((("
Output: 3

Constraints:

1 <= s.length <= 1000
s[i] is either '(' or ')'.

Solution

Use a counter to keep track of the number of parentheses. When it’s (, add 1 to counter, when it’s ), subtract 1 to counter. When counter is negative, add the absolute value to final result, and change the counter to be 0.

Time complexity: $o(n)$
Space complexity: $o(1)$

Code

class Solution:
    def minAddToMakeValid(self, s: str) -> int:
        res = 0
        cnter = 0
        for each_c in s:
            if each_c == '(':
                cnter += 1
            else:
                cnter -= 1
            if cnter < 0:
                res -= cnter
                cnter = 0
        return res + cnter