Leetcode1653. Minimum Deletions to Make String Balanced

You are given a string s consisting only of characters 'a' and 'b'​​​​.

You can delete any number of characters in s to make s balanced. s is balanced if there is no pair of indices (i,j) such that i < j and s[i] = 'b' and s[j]= 'a'.

Return the minimum number of deletions needed to make s balanced.

Example 1:

Input: s = "aababbab"
Output: 2
Explanation: You can either:
Delete the characters at 0-indexed positions 2 and 6 ("aababbab" -> "aaabbb"), or
Delete the characters at 0-indexed positions 3 and 6 ("aababbab" -> "aabbbb").

The problem can be formulated as DP.

At every point when you see 'a' , you have 2 options,

1. remove all the b's you found earlier. --> total cost = count_of_b
   OR
2. delete the current 'a'. --> total cost = cur_total_cost + 1

If u see a 'b' , then no more cost.

Thus maintain the count of 'b's you found.

class Solution:
    def minimumDeletions(self, s: str) -> int:
        cnt_b = 0
        dp = 0
        for c in s:
            if c == 'b':
                cnt_b += 1
            else:
                dp = min(cnt_b, dp+1)
        return dp