Leetcode 830: Positions of Large Groups

问题描述：
In a string s of lowercase letters, these letters form consecutive groups of the same character.
For example, a string like s = “abbxxxxzyy” has the groups “a”, “bb”, “xxxx”, “z”, and “yy”.
A group is identified by an interval [start, end], where start and end denote the start and end indices (inclusive) of the group. In the above example, “xxxx” has the interval [3,6].
A group is considered large if it has 3 or more characters.
Return the intervals of every large group sorted in increasing order by start index.

一个字符串里，有些字符连续出现。若一个字符连续出现的长度（次数）大于等于3，我们认为这组连续是长的，这时我们记录下这组连续字符的起始和终止脚标，加入到list中，返回list而且要保证脚标从小大大排列。

思路：
从左向右遍历可以保证输出是有序的。我们设立双指针，一个慢，一个快，慢的一开始指向0，快的一开始指向1 。 快的指针一步一步向前走，每一步检查是否与慢的指针指向的同一个字符，若相同则快的指针继续走（慢的指针不动），若不同则标志着此连续区间的结束，并计算连续区间的长度，若长度大于等于3则加入list，慢指针重设在快指针的位置，快指针加一（含在for循环里的）。注意最后的区间要手动结算。

代码如下：

class Solution {
    public List<List<Integer>> largeGroupPositions(String s) {
        int slower=0;
        List<List<Integer>> ans=new ArrayList<>();
        for(int faster=1; faster<s.length(); faster++){
            //case1: when the faster char is different from the slower char, we need to end the curr session
            if(s.charAt(slower)!=s.charAt(faster)){
                //specially, if the length of the subpart is >=3, we add it to the list
                if(faster-slower>=3){
                    List<Integer> list=new ArrayList<>();
                    list.add(slower);
                    list.add(faster-1);
                    ans.add(list);
                }
                slower=faster;
            }
        }
        if(s.length()-1-slower+1>=3){
            List<Integer> list=new ArrayList<>();
            list.add(slower);
            list.add(s.length()-1);
            ans.add(list);
        }
        return ans;
    }
}

时间复杂度:O(n)