Medium
Given an array of characters chars
, compress it using the following algorithm:
Begin with an empty string s
. For each group of consecutive repeating characters in chars
:
1
, append the character to s
.The compressed string s
should not be returned separately, but instead, be stored in the input character array chars
. Note that group lengths that are 10
or longer will be split into multiple characters in chars
.
After you are done modifying the input array, return the new length of the array.
You must write an algorithm that uses only constant extra space.
Example 1:
Input: chars = [“a”,”a”,”b”,”b”,”c”,”c”,”c”]
Output: Return 6, and the first 6 characters of the input array should be: [“a”,”2”,”b”,”2”,”c”,”3”]
Explanation: The groups are “aa”, “bb”, and “ccc”. This compresses to “a2b2c3”.
Example 2:
Input: chars = [“a”]
Output: Return 1, and the first character of the input array should be: [“a”]
Explanation: The only group is “a”, which remains uncompressed since it’s a single character.
Example 3:
Input: chars = [“a”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”,”b”]
Output: Return 4, and the first 4 characters of the input array should be: [“a”,”b”,”1”,”2”].
Explanation: The groups are “a” and “bbbbbbbbbbbb”. This compresses to “ab12”.
Example 4:
Input: chars = [“a”,”a”,”a”,”b”,”b”,”a”,”a”]
Output: Return 6, and the first 6 characters of the input array should be: [“a”,”3”,”b”,”2”,”a”,”2”].
Explanation: The groups are “aaa”, “bb”, and “aa”. This compresses to “a3b2a2”. Note that each group is independent even if two groups have the same character.
Constraints:
1 <= chars.length <= 2000
chars[i]
is a lowercase English letter, uppercase English letter, digit, or symbol.public class Solution {
/* This is breaking the rules, it's not in-place. */
public int compress(char[] chars) {
if (chars == null || chars.length == 0) {
return 0;
}
StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();
int count = 1;
char prev = chars[0];
for (int i = 1; i < chars.length; i++) {
if (chars[i] == prev) {
count++;
} else {
if (count > 1) {
sb.append(prev);
sb.append(count);
} else if (count == 1) {
sb.append(prev);
}
prev = chars[i];
count = 1;
}
}
sb.append(prev);
if (count > 1) {
sb.append(count);
}
int i = 0;
for (char c : sb.toString().toCharArray()) {
chars[i++] = c;
}
return sb.length();
}
}