LeetCode String 76 Minimum Window Substring

76. Minimum Window Substring

Given a string S and a string T, find the minimum window in S which will contain all the characters in T in complexity O(n).

Example:
Input: S = “ADOBECODEBANC”, T = “ABC”
Output: “BANC”

Note:
If there is no such window in S that covers all characters in T, return the empty string “”.
If there is such window, you are guaranteed that there will always be only one unique minimum window in S.

solution

采用sliding window的思路，维护两个指针left和right
right不断向右移动知道，T中的所有字符都出现，然后left也向右移动直到window内的chars恰好满足要求，然后向右移动right，循环往复。

由于需要记录每个字符的出现次数，所以采用HashMap来存储字符和字符出现次数。使用 .getOrDefault(Item i, value v)
返回i对应的指，如果i不存在返回default value v.

class Solution {
  public String minWindow(String s, String t) {

      if (s.length() == 0 || t.length() == 0) {
          return "";
      }

      // Dictionary which keeps a count of all the unique characters in t.
      Map<Character, Integer> dictT = new HashMap<Character, Integer>();
      for (int i = 0; i < t.length(); i++) {
          int count = dictT.getOrDefault(t.charAt(i), 0);
          dictT.put(t.charAt(i), count + 1);
      }

      // Number of unique characters in t, which need to be present in the desired window.
      int required = dictT.size();

      // Left and Right pointer
      int l = 0, r = 0;

      // formed is used to keep track of how many unique characters in t
      // are present in the current window in its desired frequency.
      // e.g. if t is "AABC" then the window must have two A's, one B and one C.
      // Thus formed would be = 3 when all these conditions are met.
      int formed = 0;

      // Dictionary which keeps a count of all the unique characters in the current window.
      Map<Character, Integer> windowCounts = new HashMap<Character, Integer>();

      // ans list of the form (window length, left, right)
      int[] ans = {-1, 0, 0};

      while (r < s.length()) {
          // Add one character from the right to the window
          char c = s.charAt(r);
          int count = windowCounts.getOrDefault(c, 0);
          windowCounts.put(c, count + 1);

          // If the frequency of the current character added equals to the
          // desired count in t then increment the formed count by 1.
          if (dictT.containsKey(c) && windowCounts.get(c).intValue() == dictT.get(c).intValue()) {
              formed++;
          }

          // Try and contract the window till the point where it ceases to be 'desirable'.
          while (l <= r && formed == required) {
              c = s.charAt(l);
              // Save the smallest window until now.
              if (ans[0] == -1 || r - l + 1 < ans[0]) {
                  ans[0] = r - l + 1;
                  ans[1] = l;
                  ans[2] = r;
              }

              // The character at the position pointed by the
              // `Left` pointer is no longer a part of the window.
              windowCounts.put(c, windowCounts.get(c) - 1);
              if (dictT.containsKey(c) && windowCounts.get(c).intValue() < dictT.get(c).intValue()) {
                  formed--;
              }

              // Move the left pointer ahead, this would help to look for a new window.
              l++;
          }

          // Keep expanding the window once we are done contracting.
          r++;   
      }

      return ans[0] == -1 ? "" : s.substring(ans[1], ans[2] + 1);
  }
}