451. Sort Characters By Frequency

Given a string, sort it in decreasing order based on the frequency of characters.

Example 1:

Input:
“tree”

Output:
“eert”

Explanation:
‘e’ appears twice while ‘r’ and ‘t’ both appear once.
So ‘e’ must appear before both ‘r’ and ‘t’. Therefore “eetr” is also a valid answer.
Example 2:

Input:
“cccaaa”

Output:
“cccaaa”

Explanation:
Both ‘c’ and ‘a’ appear three times, so “aaaccc” is also a valid answer.
Note that “cacaca” is incorrect, as the same characters must be together.
Example 3:

Input:
“Aabb”

Output:
“bbAa”

Explanation:
“bbaA” is also a valid answer, but “Aabb” is incorrect.
Note that ‘A’ and ‘a’ are treated as two different characters.

方法1: sort

Complexity

Time complexity: O(n log n)
Space complexity: O(26)

class Solution {
public:
    string frequencySort(string s) {
        unordered_map<char, int> hash;
        for (char c: s) hash[c]++;
        auto cmp = [&](const char & a, const char & b) {
            if (hash[a] == hash[b]) return a < b;
            return hash[a] > hash[b];
        };
        sort(s.begin(), s.end(), cmp);
        return s;
    }
};

方法1: hash + heap

思路：

这里用到的本质算法是counting sort，主要因为必须保证相同字符连续输出。定义cmp 的方法stable不stable都无法解决这个问题。(可以解决！在词频一致的情况下按照lexicographic order比较，上面的方法) 。

Complexity

Time complexity: O(n)，下面证明heapify是o(n), tighter bound than O(n log n)
Space complexity: O(n)

class Solution {
public:
    string frequencySort(string s) {
        string res;
        unordered_map<char, int> hash;
        priority_queue<pair<int, char>> pq;
        for (char c: s) hash[c]++;
        for (auto item: hash) pq.push({item.second, item.first});
        while (!pq.empty()) {
            auto top = pq.top();
            pq.pop();
            
            res += string(top.first, top.second);
        }
        return res;
    }
};