[leetcode] 1370. Increasing Decreasing String

Description

Given a string s. You should re-order the string using the following algorithm:

1. Pick the smallest character from s and append it to the result.
2. Pick the smallest character from s which is greater than the last appended character to the result and append it.
3. Repeat step 2 until you cannot pick more characters.
4. Pick the largest character from s and append it to the result.
5. Pick the largest character from s which is smaller than the last appended character to the result and append it.
6. Repeat step 5 until you cannot pick more characters.
7. Repeat the steps from 1 to 6 until you pick all characters from s.

In each step, If the smallest or the largest character appears more than once you can choose any occurrence and append it to the result.

Return the result string after sorting s with this algorithm.

Example 1:

Input: s = "aaaabbbbcccc"
Output: "abccbaabccba"
Explanation: After steps 1, 2 and 3 of the first iteration, result = "abc"
After steps 4, 5 and 6 of the first iteration, result = "abccba"
First iteration is done. Now s = "aabbcc" and we go back to step 1
After steps 1, 2 and 3 of the second iteration, result = "abccbaabc"
After steps 4, 5 and 6 of the second iteration, result = "abccbaabccba"

Example 2:

Input: s = "rat"
Output: "art"
Explanation: The word "rat" becomes "art" after re-ordering it with the mentioned algorithm.

Example 3:

Input: s = "leetcode"
Output: "cdelotee"

Example 4:

Input: s = "ggggggg"
Output: "ggggggg"

Example 5:

Input: s = "spo"
Output: "ops"

Constraints:

• 1 <= s.length <= 500
• s contains only lower-case English letters.

分析

题目的意思是：给定字符串，把它变成先递增后递减再递增再递减的序列。思路也是很直接，直接统计每个字符的频率，然后按照字符从小到达的顺序遍历，根据level标记选择顺序输出还是逆序输出。我看了一下别人的实现，思路差不多，但是可能比我的简洁，毕竟我还是偏向C++底层的思维哈哈。

代码

class Solution:
    def sortString(self, s: str) -> str:
        s1=list(set(s))
        s1.sort()
        d=collections.defaultdict(int)
        for ch in s:
            d[ch]+=1
        res=''
        level=1
        while(len(d)>0):
            t=''
            for ch in s1:
                if(ch in d and d[ch]>0):
                    t+=ch
                    d[ch]-=1
                    if(d[ch]==0):
                        del d[ch]
            if(level%2==0):
                res+=t[::-1]
            else:
                res+=t
            level+=1
        return res

参考文献

[LeetCode] [Python 3] Using Set and Sort with commentary