Strange Printer (leetcode)

strange printer

There is a strange printer with the following two special requirements:

1. The printer can only print a sequence of the same character each time.
2. At each turn, the printer can print new characters starting from and ending at any places, and will cover the original existing characters.

Given a string consists of lower English letters only, your job is to count the minimum number of turns the printer needed in order to print it.

Example 1:

Input: "aaabbb"
Output: 2
Explanation: Print "aaa" first and then print "bbb".

Example 2:

Input: "aba"
Output: 2
Explanation: Print "aaa" first and then print "b" from the second place of the string, which will cover the existing character

Hint: Length of the given string will not exceed 100.

        本人只想出了时间复杂度是O(n3)的解题方法，由于在数据量不大（100以内），所以在leetcode上也能过了，如果还有其它更好的方法，欢迎交流。

解题思路：

        用二维数组 v[begin][end] 表示字符串 s 的子串（下标从 begin 到 end）所需要最少的打印次数。考虑如何得到 v[begin][end+1]，只有两种可能：

        1. s[end+1] 字符单独打印，此时 v[begin][end+1] = v[begin][end] + 1。

        2. s[end+1] 字符连着前面的某个相同的字符一起打印，由于字符串可能出现多个相同的字符，所以假设这些字符的下标分别为 t0，t1t2······ tn，那么得到式子

               v[begin][end+1] = min (v[begin][t0] + v[t0+1][end],

                                                    v[begin][t1] + v[t1+1][end],

                                                    v[begin][t2] + v[t2+1][end]

                                                                 ...........

                                                    v[begin][tn] + v[tn+1][end])

（如果 s[end+1] 字符连着前面的字符 s[t] 一起打印的话，要想得到最少打印次数，那么下标从 t+1 开始到 end 结束之间的每一个字符必定不能与下标是 t 之前的字符一起连着打印）

下面是代码：

    int strangePrinter(string s) {
        int n = s.length();
        if (n == 0) return 0;
        vector<vector<int> > v(n, vector<int>(n, 0));
        v[0][0] = 1;
        int tmp;
        for (int j = 1; j < n; ++j) {
            for (int i = 0; i <= j; ++i) {
                if (i == j) {
                    v[i][j] = 1;
                    continue;
                }
                v[i][j] = v[i][j-1] + 1;
                for (int t = i; t <= j-1; ++t) {
                    tmp = 0;
                    if (s[t] == s[j]) {
                        tmp += v[i][t];
                        if (t < j-1) tmp += v[t+1][j-1];
                        v[i][j] = min(v[i][j], tmp);
                    }
                }
            }
        }
        return v[0][n-1];
    }