In this article, we will delve into a fascinating string manipulation problem in C. The problem statement is "Minimize removal of non-adjacent characters to make the given string empty". This question is a great way to improve your understanding of strings, character removal, and algorithmic thinking.
Given a string, the task is to minimize the number of removal operations of non-equal adjacent characters required to make the given string empty. In one operation, you can remove any two adjacent characters that are not equal.
The solution to this problem is to use a stack data structure. We iterate over the characters of the string and for each character, if the stack is not empty and the top character of the stack is not equal to the current character, we pop the top character from the stack. Otherwise, push the current character onto the stack. The number of operations required is the number of characters remaining on the final stack.
#include <iostream> #include <stack> #include <string> using namespace std; int minimizeRemovals(string str) { stack<char> s; for (char c : str) { if (!s.empty() && s.top() != c) { s.pop(); } else { s.push(c); } } return s.size(); } int main() { string str = "abba"; int operations = minimizeRemovals(str); cout << "The minimum number of removal operations is: " << operations << endl; return 0; }
The minimum number of removal operations is: 0
When we pass this string to the minimizeRemovals function, it iterates over the characters of the string. The process is as follows −
It pushes 'a' onto the stack.
Then it pushes 'b' onto the stack because 'b' is not equal to the element at the top of the stack ('a').
When the next 'b' is encountered, it sees that the top of the stack is also 'b', so it doesn't perform a remove operation, and 'b' is pushed onto the stack.
Now the top of the stack is 'b', and the next character is 'a'. Since 'a' is not equal to 'b', it performs a remove operation by popping the top of the stack . Now the top of the stack is 'b'.
Finally, the character 'a' that is not equal to the top element of the stack ('b') is encountered in the string. Therefore, it performs a removal operation and pops the top element of the stack.
At the end of the function, there are no characters left in the stack, indicating that all non-equal adjacent characters have been removed from the string. Hence, the function returns 0, which is the minimum number of removal operations required to make the given string empty.
This question provides an excellent opportunity to use stack data structures for string operations. This is a great question to practice your C coding skills and understand how to use the stack to solve problems.
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