Skip to content

1647. Minimum Deletions to Make Character Frequencies Unique

Description

A string s is called good if there are no two different characters in s that have the same frequency.

Given a string s, return the minimum number of characters you need to delete to make s good.

The frequency of a character in a string is the number of times it appears in the string. For example, in the string "aab", the frequency of 'a' is 2, while the frequency of 'b' is 1.

Β 

Example 1:

Input: s = "aab"
Output: 0
Explanation: s is already good.

Example 2:

Input: s = "aaabbbcc"
Output: 2
Explanation: You can delete two 'b's resulting in the good string "aaabcc".
Another way it to delete one 'b' and one 'c' resulting in the good string "aaabbc".

Example 3:

Input: s = "ceabaacb"
Output: 2
Explanation: You can delete both 'c's resulting in the good string "eabaab".
Note that we only care about characters that are still in the string at the end (i.e. frequency of 0 is ignored).

Β 

Constraints:

  • 1 <= s.length <= 105
  • sΒ contains only lowercase English letters.

Solutions

Solution 1: Array + Sorting

First, we use an array \(\textit{cnt}\) of length \(26\) to count the occurrences of each letter in the string \(s\).

Then, we sort the array \(\textit{cnt}\) in descending order. We define a variable \(\textit{pre}\) to record the current number of occurrences of the letter.

Next, we traverse each element \(v\) in the array \(\textit{cnt}\). If the current \(\textit{pre}\) is \(0\), we directly add \(v\) to the answer. Otherwise, if \(v \geq \textit{pre}\), we add \(v - \textit{pre} + 1\) to the answer and decrement \(\textit{pre}\) by \(1\). Otherwise, we directly update \(\textit{pre}\) to \(v\). Then, we continue to the next element.

After traversing, we return the answer.

The time complexity is \(O(n + |\Sigma| \times \log |\Sigma|)\), and the space complexity is \(O(|\Sigma|)\). Here, \(n\) is the length of the string \(s\), and \(|\Sigma|\) is the size of the alphabet. In this problem, \(|\Sigma| = 26\).

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
class Solution:
    def minDeletions(self, s: str) -> int:
        cnt = Counter(s)
        ans, pre = 0, inf
        for v in sorted(cnt.values(), reverse=True):
            if pre == 0:
                ans += v
            elif v >= pre:
                ans += v - pre + 1
                pre -= 1
            else:
                pre = v
        return ans
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
class Solution {
    public int minDeletions(String s) {
        int[] cnt = new int[26];
        for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); ++i) {
            ++cnt[s.charAt(i) - 'a'];
        }
        Arrays.sort(cnt);
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 24; i >= 0; --i) {
            while (cnt[i] >= cnt[i + 1] && cnt[i] > 0) {
                --cnt[i];
                ++ans;
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
}
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
class Solution {
public:
    int minDeletions(string s) {
        vector<int> cnt(26);
        for (char& c : s) ++cnt[c - 'a'];
        sort(cnt.rbegin(), cnt.rend());
        int ans = 0;
        for (int i = 1; i < 26; ++i) {
            while (cnt[i] >= cnt[i - 1] && cnt[i] > 0) {
                --cnt[i];
                ++ans;
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
};
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
func minDeletions(s string) (ans int) {
    cnt := make([]int, 26)
    for _, c := range s {
        cnt[c-'a']++
    }
    sort.Sort(sort.Reverse(sort.IntSlice(cnt)))
    for i := 1; i < 26; i++ {
        for cnt[i] >= cnt[i-1] && cnt[i] > 0 {
            cnt[i]--
            ans++
        }
    }
    return
}
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
function minDeletions(s: string): number {
    let map = {};
    for (let c of s) {
        map[c] = (map[c] || 0) + 1;
    }
    let ans = 0;
    let vals: number[] = Object.values(map);
    vals.sort((a, b) => a - b);
    for (let i = 1; i < vals.length; ++i) {
        while (vals[i] > 0 && i != vals.indexOf(vals[i])) {
            --vals[i];
            ++ans;
        }
    }
    return ans;
}
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
impl Solution {
    #[allow(dead_code)]
    pub fn min_deletions(s: String) -> i32 {
        let mut cnt = vec![0; 26];
        let mut ans = 0;

        for c in s.chars() {
            cnt[((c as u8) - ('a' as u8)) as usize] += 1;
        }

        cnt.sort_by(|&lhs, &rhs| rhs.cmp(&lhs));

        for i in 1..26 {
            while cnt[i] >= cnt[i - 1] && cnt[i] > 0 {
                cnt[i] -= 1;
                ans += 1;
            }
        }

        ans
    }
}

Solution 2

 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
class Solution:
    def minDeletions(self, s: str) -> int:
        cnt = Counter(s)
        vals = sorted(cnt.values(), reverse=True)
        ans = 0
        for i in range(1, len(vals)):
            while vals[i] >= vals[i - 1] and vals[i] > 0:
                vals[i] -= 1
                ans += 1
        return ans
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
class Solution {
    public int minDeletions(String s) {
        int[] cnt = new int[26];
        for (int i = 0; i < s.length(); ++i) {
            ++cnt[s.charAt(i) - 'a'];
        }
        Arrays.sort(cnt);
        int ans = 0, pre = 1 << 30;
        for (int i = 25; i >= 0; --i) {
            int v = cnt[i];
            if (pre == 0) {
                ans += v;
            } else if (v >= pre) {
                ans += v - pre + 1;
                --pre;
            } else {
                pre = v;
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
}
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
class Solution {
public:
    int minDeletions(string s) {
        vector<int> cnt(26);
        for (char& c : s) ++cnt[c - 'a'];
        sort(cnt.rbegin(), cnt.rend());
        int ans = 0, pre = 1 << 30;
        for (int& v : cnt) {
            if (pre == 0) {
                ans += v;
            } else if (v >= pre) {
                ans += v - pre + 1;
                --pre;
            } else {
                pre = v;
            }
        }
        return ans;
    }
};
 1
 2
 3
 4
 5
 6
 7
 8
 9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
func minDeletions(s string) (ans int) {
    cnt := make([]int, 26)
    for _, c := range s {
        cnt[c-'a']++
    }
    sort.Sort(sort.Reverse(sort.IntSlice(cnt)))
    pre := 1 << 30
    for _, v := range cnt {
        if pre == 0 {
            ans += v
        } else if v >= pre {
            ans += v - pre + 1
            pre--
        } else {
            pre = v
        }
    }
    return
}

Comments