I’m not able to figure out the algorithm of this problem. I need help please
How to swap the exact positions to get the largest substring …eg I am getting output as 5 instead of 8 for the input “bbaaabaaaab”
Algorithm to swap
You can solve this problem in O(n) time using the two pointer approach.
- Make two variabes , say i and j .
- i defines the beginning of a window and j defines its end.
- Start i from 0 and j from k.
- Let’s talk about the singular case when we are considering the max window for only 'a’s and consider only the swapping of b-> a. If we are able to get the answer for max window of consecutive 'a’s , we can simply implement the same algo for the max ‘b’ window as well.
- So we started i from 0 and j from k.
- Move j ahead freely as long as there are ‘a’ characters at s[ j ] position.
- Maintain a count variable which counts the number of swaps made or the number of 'b’s in our A window.
- If you encounter a ‘b’ char at s[ j ] position , increment the count variable. Count should never exceed k .
- Take the size of the window at every point using length = j - i + 1;
- Compute the max size window this way and do the same for ‘b’ as well.
- Output the maximum size window of ‘a’ and ‘b’.
you can see this: