leetcode - 1963. Minimum Number of Swaps to Make the String Balanced

Description

You are given a 0-indexed string s of even length n. The string consists of exactly n / 2 opening brackets ‘[’ and n / 2 closing brackets ‘]’.

A string is called balanced if and only if:

It is the empty string, or
It can be written as AB, where both A and B are balanced strings, or
It can be written as [C], where C is a balanced string.
You may swap the brackets at any two indices any number of times.

Return the minimum number of swaps to make s balanced.

Example 1:

Input: s = "][]["
Output: 1
Explanation: You can make the string balanced by swapping index 0 with index 3.
The resulting string is "[[]]".

Example 2:

Input: s = "]]][[["
Output: 2
Explanation: You can do the following to make the string balanced:
- Swap index 0 with index 4. s = "[]][][".
- Swap index 1 with index 5. s = "[[][]]".
The resulting string is "[[][]]".

Example 3:

Input: s = "[]"
Output: 0
Explanation: The string is already balanced.

Constraints:

n == s.length
2 <= n <= 10^6
n is even.
s[i] is either '[' or ']'.
The number of opening brackets '[' equals n / 2, and the number of closing brackets ']' equals n / 2.

Solution

Solved after hints…

Intuitive

When there’s an imbalanced ], use the rightest [ to swap.

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

Greedy

Keep track of the maximum imbalance, to solve this imbalance, we need to do (im+1)//2 swaps.

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

Code

Intuitive

class Solution:
    def minSwaps(self, s: str) -> int:
        open_to_swap = len(s) - 1
        while open_to_swap >= 0 and s[open_to_swap] == ']':
            open_to_swap -= 1
        cnter = 0
        res = 0
        i = 0
        while i < open_to_swap:
            if s[i] == '[':
                cnter += 1
            else:
                cnter -= 1
            if cnter < 0:
                res += 1
                open_to_swap -= 1
                while open_to_swap >= i and s[open_to_swap] == ']':
                    open_to_swap -= 1
                cnter += 2
            i += 1
        return res

Greedy

class Solution:
    def minSwaps(self, s: str) -> int:
        cnter = 0
        max_imbalance = 0
        for each_c in s:
            if each_c == ']':
                cnter -= 1
            else:
                cnter += 1
            max_imbalance = min(max_imbalance, cnter)
        return (-max_imbalance + 1) // 2